the act or the state of declining; declination; descent; slope.-a falling off towards a worse state; a downward tendency; deterioration; decay; as, the declension of virtue, of science, of a state, etc.-act of courteously refusing; act of declining; a declinature; refusal; as, the declension of a nomination.-inflection of nouns, adjectives, etc., according to the grammatical cases.-the form of the inflection of a word declined by cases; as, the first or the second declension of nouns, adjectives, etc. -rehearsing a word as declined.