DECLENSION • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Declension

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

Listen

noun

Declension n.

1.

The act or the state of declining; declination; descent; slope. "The declension of the land from that place to the sea."

2.

A falling off towards a worse state; a downward tendency; deterioration; decay; as, the declension of virtue, of science, of a state, etc. "Seduced the pitch and height of all his thoughts To base declension."

3.

Act of courteously refusing; act of declining; a declinature; refusal; as, the declension of a nomination.

4.

(Gram.)

(a)

Inflection of nouns, adjectives, etc., according to the grammatical cases.

(b)

The form of the inflection of a word declined by cases; as, the first or the second declension of nouns, adjectives, etc.

(c)

Rehearsing a word as declined. Note: The nominative was held to be the primary and original form, and was likened to a perpendicular line; the variations, or oblique cases, were regarded as fallings (hence called casus, cases, or fallings) from the nominative or perpendicular; and an enumerating of the various forms, being a sort of progressive descent from the noun's upright form, was called a declension.

Declension of the needle, declination of the needle.

See images of 'Declension'

Etymology of 'Declension'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Declension" Quotes from Famous Books

... had produced in him a species of disintegration. He had drunk heavily and almost constantly. It had been during the sour temper following such a bout that he had quarreled with and shot the Ute. From that hour his declension had been swift. How far he had gone was shown by the way he had taken Dillon's great service to him. The thing rankled in his mind, filled him with surging rage whenever he thought of it. He hated the young fellow more ...

— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... has a time of rudeness antecedent to perfection, as well as of false refinement and declension, I have been cautious lest my zeal for antiquity might drive me into times too remote, and crowd my book with words now no longer understood. I have fixed Sidney's work for the boundary, beyond which I make few ...

— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... (66) Latin words. In the fourth book, he traces those which relate to place; in the fifth, those connected with the idea of time; and in the sixth, the origin of both these classes, as they appear in the writings of the poets. The seventh book is employed on declension; in which the author enters upon a minute and extensive enquiry, comprehending a variety of acute and profound observations on the formation of Latin nouns, and their respective natural declinations from the nominative case. In ...

— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... shattered mouths; the walls now presenting long lines of rampart, and now a succession of peaks. But still, although they had now traversed the chasm for seventy or eighty miles, they found no close and no declension ...

— Overland • John William De Forest

... achievements which grace enabled her to accomplish was the cause; or, not improbably, a cherished satisfaction in the blessing she had received, instead of in the BLESSER Himself, may have led to the separation. She seems to have been largely unconscious of her declension; self-occupied and self-contented, she scarcely noticed His absence; she was resting, resting alone,—never asking where He had gone, or how He was employed. And more than this, the door of her chamber was ...

— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor

Copyright © 2025 Free-Translator.com