Decline

de-klin', v. i. [-clined (-klind''), -clining.] To bend over or hang down, as from w ' wearine , despondency, etc.; to tend towards a close or extinction; to fail, sink, decay; to turn aside, deviate, stray; to refuse. — v. t. To bend downward, depre ; to turn away from, refuse to comply with, reject courteously, shun, avoid. (Gram.) To inflect in order in the changes of grammatical form.— n. A falling off; tendency to a worse state; deterioration. (Med.) That period of a disorder when the symptoms abate in violence; a gradual wasting away of the physical faculties. Decay; consumption.— Declin'er, w.— Declin' able, a. That may be declined; admitting of inflection. — Declension, -klen's hun, ti. Declination; descent; slope; a falling off from excellence; deterioration; decay; act of courteously refusing; declinature. (Gram.) Inflection of a word, according to grammatical forms; the form of the inflection of a word declined by cases.— Dec'linate, -ll-nat, a. (Bot.) Bending downward, in a curve; curved downward; declined.— Declinal i on, n. Act or state of bending downward, or of falling off from excellence, or of deviating or turning aside; obliquity; withdrawal. (Gram.) Act of inflecting a word through its various terminations. — Decun^atory, -klinra-to-rT, a. Containing a refusal. — Declin'ature, -klin'a-chur, n. Act of putting away or refusing.— Declivity, -kliv'i-ti, n. Deviation from a horizontal line; descent of surface; inclination downward; a descending surface; slope. — Declivous, -kli'vus, -clivitous, -klivl-tus, a. Gradually descending; sloping.