Decline Meaning
/dɪˈklaɪn/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounDownward movement, fall.
nounA sloping downward, e.g. of a hill or road.
Sentence Examples
There was a rapid decline in stock prices.
All of us want prices to decline.
There has been a 5 per cent decline in student numbers.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The scientist observed a steady ____ in the bird population over ten years.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
There was a rapid ____ in stock prices.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English declinen, and ultimately Latin declīnō (“to bend, turn aside, deflect, inflect, decline”, from dē- (“down”) + clīnō (“to bend, to incline”)), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱley- (English lean). The senses arrived from two separate pathways in Middle English: * The grammatical sense came from Old English declīnian, which was borrowed directly from the Latin etymon. * All senses except the grammatical sense were derived from those of Old French decliner. Old French itself borrowed the verb from Latin.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"In an era when political leaders promise deliverance from decline through America’s purported preeminence in scientific research, the news that science is in deep trouble in the United States has been as unwelcome as a diagnosis of leukemia following the loss of health insurance."
— 2012 January 26, Philip E. Mirowski, “Harms to Health from the Pursuit of Profits”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 04 Apr 2012, page 87:
"It is also pertinent to note that the current obvious decline in work on holarctic hepatics most surely reflects a current obsession with cataloging and with nomenclature of the organisms—as divorced from their study as living entities."
— 1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page ix:
""It knows it has to plan for managed decline, but it can't even plan for managed decline if it doesn't know how much decline to manage.""
— 2022 March 23, Paul Clifton, “Londoners pay the price”, in RAIL, number 953, page 48:
"The issuing bank only checks the consumer's credit card number for authorization. […] Soft declines are those declines in which the bank requires further verification."
— 2004, David A. Montague, Fraud Prevention Techniques for Credit Card Fraud:
"After her sother died, Connie began to decline noticeably."
— 1982 February 13, Nancy Walker, “Connie”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 29, page 10:
Explore More C1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The scientist observed a steady ____ in the bird population over ten years.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
There was a rapid ____ in stock prices.