decline

Meaning

1. Downward movement, fall.
2. A sloping downward, e.g. of a hill or road.
3. A deterioration of condition; a weakening or worsening.
4. A reduction or diminution of activity, prevalence or quantity.
5. The act of declining or refusing something.
6. To move downwards, to fall, to drop.
7. To become weaker or worse.
8. To bend downward; to bring down; to depress; to cause to bend, or fall.
9. To cause to decrease or diminish.
10. To turn or bend aside; to deviate; to stray; to withdraw.
11. To choose not to do something; refuse, forbear, refrain.
12. To inflect for case, number, gender, and the like.
13. To recite all the different declined forms of (a word): to recite its declension.
14. To run through from first to last; to recite in order as though declining a noun.
15. 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.

Etymology / origin

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.

Related words

Descendant words

• deklinoida(Finnish) (cog)

Sources

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