Definition of Decline

	Add the "Quote of the Day" to Your Site or Blog Now!
Home - Quote Topics - Quotes of the Day - Quote Keywords - Author Types - Quotation Trivia Authors: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Decline

To bend, or lean downward; to take a downward direction; to bend over or hang down, as from weakness, weariness, despondency, etc.; to condescend.

To tend or draw towards a close, decay, or extinction; to tend to a less perfect state; to become diminished or impaired; to fail; to sink; to diminish; to lessen; as, the day declines; virtue declines; religion declines; business declines.

To turn or bend aside; to deviate; to stray; to withdraw; as, a line that declines from straightness; conduct that declines from sound morals.

To turn away; to shun; to refuse; -- the opposite of accept or consent; as, he declined, upon principle.

To bend downward; to bring down; to depress; to cause to bend, or fall.

To cause to decrease or diminish.

To put or turn aside; to turn off or away from; to refuse to undertake or comply with; reject; to shun; to avoid; as, to decline an offer; to decline a contest; he declined any participation with them.

To inflect, or rehearse in order the changes of grammatical form of; as, to decline a noun or an adjective.

To run through from first to last; to repeat like a schoolboy declining a noun.

A falling off; a tendency to a worse state; diminution or decay; deterioration; also, the period when a thing is tending toward extinction or a less perfect state; as, the decline of life; the decline of strength; the decline of virtue and religion.

That period of a disorder or paroxysm when the symptoms begin to abate in violence; as, the decline of a fever.

A gradual sinking and wasting away of the physical faculties; any wasting disease, esp. pulmonary consumption; as, to die of a decline.

Related Definitions:

Abate, Accept, Adjective, Also, An, And, Any, As, Aside, Avoid, Away, Become, Begin, Bend, Bring, Business, Cause, Close, Comply, Condescend, Conduct, Consent, Consumption, Contest, Day, Decay, Decline, Declined, Declining, Decrease, Depress, Despondency, Deterioration, Deviate, Die, Diminish, Diminished, Diminution, Direction, Disease, Disorder, Down, Downward, Draw, Extinction, Faculties, Fail, Fall, Falling, Fever, First, Form, From, Gradual, Grammatical, Hang, He, Impaired, In, Inflect, Is, Last, Lean, Less, Lessen, Life, Like, Line, Noun, Of, Off, Offer, Opposite, Or, Order, Over, Paroxysm, Participation, Perfect, Period, Physical, Principle, Pulmonary, Put, Refuse, Rehearse, Reject, Religion, Repeat, Run, Schoolboy, Shun, Sink, Sinking, Sound, State, Straightness, Stray, Strength, Take, Tend, Tendency, Tending, That, The, Them, Thing, Through, To, Toward, Towards, Turn, Undertake, Upon, Violence, Virtue, Wasting, Weakness, Weariness, When, With, Withdraw, Worse

Decline Quotations

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
Aristotle

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever.
John Keats

I decline to accept the end of man.
William Faulkner

I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
George Santayana

Be able to decline a date so gracefully that the person isn't embarrassed that he or she asked.
Marilyn vos Savant

The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.
Luis Bunuel

I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination.
Scott Adams

If I have to climb to heaven on a ladder, I shall decline the invitation.
Mercedes McCambridge

Whipping and abuse are like laudanum: you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.
Harriet Beecher Stowe

Decline Translations

decline in Dutch is dalen, kleiner worden, afnemen
decline in Italian is rifiutare
decline in Latin is recuso, declive
decline in Spanish is declinar

Quotes