decline
Meanings
noun
- Downward movement, fall.
- A sloping downward, e.g. of a hill or road.
- A deterioration of condition; a weakening or worsening.
- A reduction or diminution of activity, prevalence or quantity.
- The act of declining or refusing something.
verb
- To move downwards, to fall, to drop.
- To become weaker or worse.
- To bend downward; to bring down; to depress; to cause to bend, or fall.
- To cause to decrease or diminish.
- To turn or bend aside; to deviate; to stray; to withdraw.
- To choose not to do something; refuse, forbear, refrain.
- To inflect for case, number, gender, and the like.
- To recite all the different declined forms of (a word): to recite its declension.
- To run through from first to last; to recite in order as though declining a noun.
- To reject a penalty against the opposing team, usually because the result of accepting it would benefit the non-penalized team less than the preceding play.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English declinen, and ultimately Latin declīnō (“to bend, turn aside, deflect, inflect, decline”, from dē- (“down”) + clīnō (“to bend, to incline”)), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱley- (English lean). The senses arrived from two separate pathways in Middle English: * The grammatical sense came from Old English declīnian, which was borrowed directly from the Latin etymon. * All senses except the grammatical sense were derived from those of Old French decliner. Old French itself borrowed the verb from Latin.
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Derived words
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