Declinate

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˈdɛklɪnət/

Definitions

1. To bend or slope downward physically or metaphorically ; to change a word's form according to grammatical case, number, or gender
2. To tilt or lean in a downward direction ; to modify a noun, pronoun, or adjective to show its grammatical relationship
3. To descend or curve downward from a position ; to inflect a word to reflect its case, number, or gender variations

Etymology: Latin "dēclīnō" meant "to bend down" or "to turn aside," built from "dē-" (down, away) and "clīnō" (to bend, incline). That same bending image runs through a whole family of English words: "decline," "incline," "recline," and "clinic," the last from a Greek word for a sickbed, where a patient lies bent over the couch. "Declinate" keeps the physical sense most literally. Its adjective form, first recorded in 1820, describes something bent or turned downward, such as a leaf or a flower that droops. The verb sense, to modify a noun, pronoun, or adjective to show its grammatical role, is a later, more technical extension of the same image. Grammarians pictured a word's endings as bending away from its base form, so declension, the set of forms a noun or pronoun takes, and this verb both draw on the idea of a word being turned or inflected from its root.