decline: [14] The notion underlying decline is of ‘bending away’. It comes via Old French decliner from Latin dēclināre ‘turn aside, go down’, a compound verb formed from the prefix dē-, ‘away, aside’ and clināre ‘bend’, which also produced English incline and recline and is related to lean. Its Latin nominal derivative dēclinātiō has bifurcated in English, to produce declination [14] and, via Old French declinaison, declension [15].
The latter is used only in the specialized grammatical sense ‘set of inflectional endings of a noun’, already present in Latin, which derives from the concept that every inflected form of a word represents a ‘falling away’ from its uninflected base form (the same underlying notion appears in the term oblique case ‘any grammatical sense other than the nominative or vocative’, and indeed the word case itself, whose etymological meaning is ‘fall’; and there are perhaps traces of it in inflection, literally ‘bending’). => declension, incline, lean, recline
decline (v.)
late 14c., "to turn aside, deviate," from Old French decliner "to sink, decline, degenerate, turn aside," from Latin declinare "to lower, avoid, deviate, to bend from, inflect," from de- "from" (see de-) + clinare "to bend," from PIE *klei-n-, suffixed form of *klei- "to lean" (see lean (v.)). Sense has been altered since c. 1400 by interpretation of de- as "downward." Meaning "not to consent, politely refuse," is from 1630s. Related: Declined; declining.
decline (n.)
early 14c., "deterioration, degeneration," from Old French declin (see decline (v.)).
双语例句
1. After years of neglect and decline the city was cleaning itself up.
多年的玩忽职守和经济萧条过后，这个城市在进行自我整顿。
来自柯林斯例句
2. The electoral fortunes of the Liberal Democratic party may decline.
自由民主党的选举运势可能会下降。
来自柯林斯例句
3. He criticised the government for failing to halt economic decline.
他批评政府未能遏止经济下滑。
来自柯林斯例句
4. The decline in marriage has been offset by a rise in cohabitation.
结婚人数的减少由于同居人数的增加而得以弥补。
来自柯林斯例句
5. I think we can date the decline of Western Civilization quite precisely.
