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Abnegate vs Decline - What's the difference?

abnegate | decline |

As verbs the difference between abnegate and decline

is that abnegate is to deny (oneself something); to renounce or give up (a right, a power, a claim, a privilege, a convenience) while decline is .

As an adjective decline is

declined.

abnegate

English

Verb

(abnegat)
  • To deny (oneself something); to renounce or give up (a right, a power, a claim, a privilege, a convenience).
  • * 1898 December 10, Asbell v. State'', reported in ''The Pacific Reporter , volume 55, page 339:
  • To compel a state, upon theories of doubtful statutory interpretation, to appear as defendant suitor in its own courts, and to litigate with private parties as to whether it had abnegated its sovereignty of exemption, would be intolerable.
  • * 1875 January, Brownson's Quarterly Review , page 20:
  • All ancient and modern histories of nations abnegate God.
  • To relinquish; to surrender; to abjure.
  • Derived terms

    * abnegator

    References

    ----

    decline

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Downward movement, fall.(rfex)
  • A sloping downward, e.g. of a hill or road.(rfex)
  • (senseid)A weakening.(rfex)
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2012-01
  • , author=Philip E. Mirowski , title=Harms to Health from the Pursuit of Profits , volume=100, issue=1, page=87 , magazine= citation , passage=In an era when political leaders promise deliverance from decline through America’s purported preeminence in scientific research, the news that science is in deep trouble in the United States has been as unwelcome as a diagnosis of leukemia following the loss of health insurance.}}
  • A reduction or diminution of activity.
  • *
  • It is also pertinent to note that the current obvious decline in work on holarctic hepatics most surely reflects a current obsession with cataloging and with nomenclature of the organisms—as divorced from their study as living entities.

    Antonyms

    * incline

    Verb

    (declin)
  • To move downwards, to fall, to drop.
  • To become weaker or worse.
  • To bend downward; to bring down; to depress; to cause to bend, or fall.
  • * Thomson
  • in melancholy deep, with head declined
  • * Spenser
  • And now fair Phoebus gan decline in haste / His weary wagon to the western vale.
  • To cause to decrease or diminish.
  • * Beaumont and Fletcher
  • You have declined his means.
  • * Burton
  • He knoweth his error, but will not seek to decline it.
  • To turn or bend aside; to deviate; to stray; to withdraw.
  • a line that declines from straightness
    conduct that declines from sound morals
  • * Bible, Psalms cxix. 157
  • Yet do I not decline from thy testimonies.
  • To refuse, forbear.
  • * Massinger
  • Could I decline this dreadful hour?
  • * , chapter=7
  • , title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=“[…] This is Mr. Churchill, who, as you are aware, is good enough to come to us for his diaconate, and, as we hope, for much longer; and being a gentleman of independent means, he declines to take any payment.” Saying this Walden rubbed his hands together and smiled contentedly.}}
  • To inflect for case, number and sometimes gender.
  • * Ascham
  • after the first declining of a noun and a verb
  • (by extension) To run through from first to last; to repeat like a schoolboy declining a noun.
  • (Shakespeare)
  • (American football) To reject a penalty against the opposing team, usually because the result of accepting it would benefit the non-penalized team less than the preceding play.
  • The team chose to decline the fifteen-yard penalty because their receiver had caught the ball for a thirty-yard gain.

    Derived terms

    * declension * declination