Declension

Part of speech: noun (n.)

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

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. Shak.

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

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

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

6. Rehearsing a word as declined.