ascendant vs predecessor

ascendant

noun
  • Being in control; superiority, or commanding influence; ascendancy. 

  • An ancestor. 

  • A royal heir assuming (a place of power). 

  • The horoscope, or that degree of the ecliptic which rises above the horizon at the moment of one's birth; supposed to have a commanding influence on a person's life and fortune. 

  • Ascent; height; elevation. 

adj
  • Surpassing or controlling. 

  • Rising, moving upward. 

predecessor

noun
  • One who precedes; one who has preceded another in any state, position, office, etc.; one whom another follows or comes after, in any office or position. 

  • A model or type of machinery or device which precedes the current (or later) one. Usually used to describe an earlier, outdated model. 

  • A vertex having a directed path to another vertex 

How often have the words ascendant and predecessor occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )