decline

di-KLYN/dɪˈklaɪn/

15 meanings of decline

1
verbtransitive
To choose not to accept or do something; to refuse or hold back from it.
The senator declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.
We respectfully decline any offers of financial assistance.
Similarrefuse, reject
Oppositeaccept, agree
Note
Turning something down has a flexible grammar. Decline an offer takes a plain object, while declines to take any payment takes an infinitive, the shape used when someone will not do something. Philip Massinger's The Roman Actor (1626) shows an older edge with "Could I decline this dreadful hour?" There, declining means avoiding something feared rather than courteously refusing what is offered.
2
verbintransitive
To gradually become weaker, worse, or less effective.
The patient's condition continued to decline through the night.
Local industries declined as factories moved overseas.
Similardeteriorate, worsen, weaken, degenerate, wane
Oppositeimprove, recover, flourish
3
nouncountable or uncountable
A worsening or weakening of someone's or something's condition.
The empire's moral decline was chronicled by later historians.
Veterinarians traced the animal's decline to a hidden infection.
Similardeterioration, degeneration, decay, worsening
Oppositeimprovement, recovery, revival
Note
Here the falling is in quality, not number. The noun settles into fixed frames: health suffers a decline, standards are on the decline, a reputation is in decline. That last frame takes no article and describes a lasting state rather than a single drop, which is how it reaches political prose about a nation's standing. Where something shrinks in amount rather than worsens, the "reduction" meaning takes over.
4
nouncountable
A reduction in the amount, frequency, or prevalence of something.
Economists noted a steady decline in consumer spending.
The decline in measles cases followed widespread vaccination.
Similardecrease, drop, fall, reduction, downturn
Oppositeincrease, rise, growth
Note
Numbers fall in this sense: populations, footfall, the volume of research. It sits comfortably after another noun, as in population decline, or takes in before whatever is shrinking: a decline in footfall. Paul Clifton, writing in RAIL in 2022, quotes planners facing managed decline, a deliberate and planned shrinking. Asking how much decline to manage treats it as a quantity that can be measured out.
5
nouncountable
The act of refusing or turning down something offered.
The committee accepted his decline of the nomination without protest.
A quick decline of the merger offer signaled their confidence.
Similarrefusal, rejection
Oppositeacceptance
Note
Card payments give the noun a working life of its own. When a bank refuses a transaction, the refusal is a decline, and declines come in kinds: David A. Montague's Fraud Prevention Techniques for Credit Card Fraud (2004) describes soft declines as those in which the bank requires further verification. Elsewhere the noun names a single act of turning something down, such as a nomination or an offer.
6
verbintransitive
To move downward; to fall or drop to a lower position.
Roads decline sharply on the far side of the ridge.
The valley floor declined toward a hidden stream.
Similardescend, slope, dip, drop
Oppositerise, ascend, climb
7
nouncountable
A movement downward to a lower point or level; a fall.
The kite's sudden decline alarmed the children.
Pilots monitor the aircraft's decline during the final approach.
Similardescent, drop, fall
Oppositeascent, rise, climb
8
nouncountable
A downward slope, such as that of a hill or road.
The cyclists picked up speed on the long decline.
A gentle decline led from the house down to the lake.
Similarslope, descent, downgrade
Oppositeincline, ascent, rise
9
verbtransitive
To bend something downward or bring it down, causing it to bend, sink, or fall.
The knight declined his lance toward the ground.
Mourners decline their heads at the graveside.
Similarlower, bow, bend, dip
Oppositeraise, lift
Note
The oldest picture in the word: Latin declīnō joined de, "down", to clīnō, "to bend", from the same ancient root as English lean. Both voices here are poetic. Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590) has Phoebus decline his weary wagon toward the western vale, and James Thomson's The Seasons pictures a figure "with head declined" in melancholy. In each case something is lowered by an agent rather than simply falling.
10
verbtransitive
To inflect a noun, pronoun, or adjective for case, number, and gender.
Beginners must decline each noun across all six cases.
He declined the adjective to agree with its noun.
Similarinflect
Note
The grammarian's sense came with the word from Latin, where declīnō already meant "to inflect" as well as "to bend aside." It usually applies to nouns, pronouns and adjectives, the words that change shape for case, number and gender. The full set of forms a word takes is its declension, and the verb declense means the same as decline in this sense.

11
verbobsoletetransitive
To make something decrease or grow smaller.
You have declin'd his means.
1612, Nathan Field, John Fletcher
Note
A causative use from the early seventeenth century. In The Honest Mans Fortune, by Field, Fletcher and Massinger, someone has "declin'd his means," cutting them down. Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy speaks of an error a man will not seek to decline. Modern English keeps the meaning only without an object, as in the "fall, drop" meaning. To make something smaller, it reduces or diminishes it.
12
verbCanadiantransitive
In football, to reject a penalty called against the opposing team, usually because accepting it would help less than the previous play.
The captain decided to decline the holding penalty after the long gain.
With a first down already earned, they declined the offside call.
Similarrefuse, reject, waive
Oppositeaccept
Note
Gridiron football treats declining as a choice made after a foul, in both the American and Canadian games. The object is the penalty itself: a team declines the fifteen-yard penalty or the holding call because the play just run gained more than enforcement would. Declining lets the result of the play stand, while accepting replaces it with the penalty.
13
verbtransitive
To recite all the inflected forms of a word in order; to give its full declension.
Each pupil had to decline the noun before the class.
He declined the Greek word flawlessly from memory.
Note
The schoolroom exercise. Where the inflecting sense changes a word's form to fit a sentence, this one recites the whole set aloud in order. Roger Ascham's The Scholemaster (1570) speaks of "the first declining of a noun and a verb." That phrasing shows the drill counted among a pupil's first lessons, and that it was not reserved for nouns alone.
14
verbtransitive
To run through something from first to last, reciting it in order.
The old sailor would decline every port he had visited, in sequence.
She declined the family lineage back ten generations.
Similarrecite, enumerate, list
Note
The schoolroom drill turned into rhetoric. In Shakespeare's Richard III, "Decline all this, and see what now thou art" introduces a list of reversals. A happy wife becomes a distressed widow, and a queen becomes a caitiff crowned with care, each recited in turn like the forms in the reciting sense. The verb takes the list itself as its object.
15
verbintransitive
To turn or bend aside; to deviate or withdraw from a course.
He declined from his usual route to avoid the crowds.
True friends never decline from their promises.
Similardeviate, stray, depart, swerve
Note
Here the motion is sideways, and it travels with from: a line declines from straightness, and conduct declines from sound morals. The King James Bible of 1611 has "Yet do I not decline from thy testimonies," where to decline is to stray from a rule. The sense goes straight back to the Latin "turn aside" behind the "bend downward" meaning.

Practice

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Origin

From Middle English declinen, ultimately from Latin declīnō ("to bend, turn aside, inflect, decline"), formed from de ("down") plus clīnō ("to bend, to incline"), from a Proto-Indo-European root also giving English lean. In Middle English the senses arrived by two routes: the grammatical sense came from Old English declīnian, borrowed directly from Latin, while all the other senses came through Old French decliner, which had itself borrowed the verb from Latin.