decline
pronunciation
How to pronounce decline in British English:
UK [dɪˈklaɪn]
How to pronounce decline in American English:
US [dɪˈklaɪn]
-
- Noun:
- change toward something smaller or lower
- a condition inferior to an earlier condition; a gradual falling off from a better state
- a gradual decrease; as of stored charge or current
- a downward slope or bend
-
- Verb:
- grow worse
- refuse to accept
- show unwillingness towards
- grow smaller
- go down
- go down in value
- inflect for number, gender, case, etc., "in many languages, speakers decline nouns, pronouns, and adjectives"
Word Origin
- decline
- decline: [14] The notion underlying decline is of ‘bending away’. It comes via Old French decliner from Latin dēclināre ‘turn aside, go down’, a compound verb formed from the prefix dē-, ‘away, aside’ and clināre ‘bend’, which also produced English incline and recline and is related to lean. Its Latin nominal derivative dēclinātiō has bifurcated in English, to produce declination [14] and, via Old French declinaison, declension [15].The latter is used only in the specialized grammatical sense ‘set of inflectional endings of a noun’, already present in Latin, which derives from the concept that every inflected form of a word represents a ‘falling away’ from its uninflected base form (the same underlying notion appears in the term oblique case ‘any grammatical sense other than the nominative or vocative’, and indeed the word case itself, whose etymological meaning is ‘fall’; and there are perhaps traces of it in inflection, literally ‘bending’).=> declension, incline, lean, recline
- decline (v.)
- late 14c., "to turn aside, deviate," from Old French decliner "to sink, decline, degenerate, turn aside," from Latin declinare "to lower, avoid, deviate, to bend from, inflect," from de- "from" (see de-) + clinare "to bend," from PIE *klei-n-, suffixed form of *klei- "to lean" (see lean (v.)). Sense has been altered since c. 1400 by interpretation of de- as "downward." Meaning "not to consent, politely refuse," is from 1630s. Related: Declined; declining.
- decline (n.)
- early 14c., "deterioration, degeneration," from Old French declin (see decline (v.)).
Antonym
Example
- 1. London has resisted britain 's relative decline .
- 2. The narrative of american decline is often overdone .
- 3. Its decline reflects a wider fall in orders .
- 4. All part of britain 's national decline .
- 5. The decline has left overall valuations looking reasonable .