Declension (Noun)
Meaning 1
Process of changing to an inferior state.
Classification
Nouns denoting natural processes.
Examples
- The city's economic decline was a clear example of declension, as once-thriving businesses were now shuttered and abandoned.
- The patient's condition showed a steady declension over the course of the treatment, despite the doctors' best efforts.
- The team's performance was marked by a gradual declension in skill and strategy as the season wore on.
- The company's reputation suffered a sharp declension after the scandal broke, and it never fully recovered.
- The decline of the ancient civilization was a slow and painful declension, marked by wars, famines, and environmental disasters.
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Meaning 2
The inflection of nouns and pronouns and adjectives in Indo-European languages.
Classification
Nouns denoting relations between people or things or ideas.
Examples
- The declension of nouns in Latin is complex, with six cases and multiple patterns of inflection.
- In Sanskrit, the declension of nouns is based on the grammatical case and the number of the noun.
- The declension of adjectives in Greek is similar to that of nouns, with three genders and three numbers.
- The study of declension is essential for understanding the grammar of Indo-European languages such as Russian and German.
- In Old English, the declension of nouns was more complex than in Modern English, with five cases and multiple patterns of inflection.
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Meaning 3
A downward slope or bend.
Classification
Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made).
Examples
- The road descended rapidly, following the natural declension of the hillside.
- The landscape architects designed the garden to follow the gentle declension of the terrain.
- The declension of the cliff face made it a challenging spot for rock climbers to navigate.
- After reaching the summit, the group began their journey down the mountain, following the steep declension of the trail.
- The engineer took into account the declension of the terrain when designing the bridge's foundation.
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Meaning 4
A class of nouns or pronouns or adjectives in Indo-European languages having the same (or very similar) inflectional forms; "the first declension in Latin".
Classification
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects.
Examples
- In the earliest written Latin texts, nouns and adjectives fell into distinct patterns of declension based on the endings they had.
- Throughout history, Greek grammar books usually recognized only the three standard declensions for masculine and feminine nouns.
- Although modern languages may simplify and conflate different declensions into fewer ones, Proto-Indo-European itself has at least six or more.
- From its case inflections the neuter forms two separate declensions that parallel those of the feminine but retain more primitive traits.
- To define and assign all Germanic words into groups for this sort of analysis was long felt a hopeless task since a set declension and any standard change between a series are merely guessed by pattern for much.