(v. i.) To bend, or lean downward; to take a downward
direction; to bend over or hang down, as from weakness, weariness,
despondency, etc.; to condescend.
(v. i.) 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.
(v. i.) To turn or bend aside; to deviate; to stray; to
withdraw; as, a line that declines from straightness; conduct that
declines from sound morals.
(v. i.) To turn away; to shun; to refuse; -- the opposite of
accept or consent; as, he declined, upon principle.
(v. t.) To bend downward; to bring down; to depress; to cause
to bend, or fall.
(v. t.) To cause to decrease or diminish.
(v. t.) 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.
(v. t.) To inflect, or rehearse in order the changes of
grammatical form of; as, to decline a noun or an adjective.
(v. t.) To run through from first to last; to repeat like a
schoolboy declining a noun.
(v. i.) 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.
(v. i.) That period of a disorder or paroxysm when the symptoms
begin to abate in violence; as, the decline of a fever.
(v. i.) A gradual sinking and wasting away of the physical
faculties; any wasting disease, esp. pulmonary consumption; as, to die
of a decline.
