Frail vs Decline - What's the difference?
frail | decline |
Easily broken; mentally or physically fragile; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish; easily destroyed; not tenacious of life; weak; infirm.
Liable to fall from virtue or be led into sin; not strong against temptation; weak in resolution; unchaste.
A basket made of rushes, used chiefly for containing figs and raisins.
The quantity of raisins contained in a frail.
A rush for weaving baskets.
(dated, slang) A girl.
* 1931 , (Cab Calloway) / (Irving Mills), ‘Minnie the Moocher’:
* 1933 , , , edition 1, Book 2, Chapter XXII:
* 1939 , (Raymond Chandler), The Big Sleep , Penguin 2011, p. 148:
* 1941 , Preston Sturges, '', published in ''Five Screenplays , ISBN 0-520-05442-4, page 77:
To play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.
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=
A reduction or diminution of activity.
*
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
* Spenser
To cause to decrease or diminish.
* Beaumont and Fletcher
* Burton
To turn or bend aside; to deviate; to stray; to withdraw.
* Bible, Psalms cxix. 157
To refuse, forbear.
* Massinger
* , chapter=7
, title= To inflect for case, number and sometimes gender.
* Ascham
(by extension) To run through from first to last; to repeat like a schoolboy declining a noun.
(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.
As adjectives the difference between frail and decline
is that frail is easily broken; mentally or physically fragile; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish; easily destroyed; not tenacious of life; weak; infirm while decline is declined.As verbs the difference between frail and decline
is that frail is to play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail while decline is .As a noun frail
is a basket made of rushes, used chiefly for containing figs and raisins.frail
English
Adjective
(er)Noun
(en noun)- She was the roughest, toughest frail , but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.
- There were five people in the Quirinal bar after dinner, a high-class Italian frail who sat on a stool making persistent conversation against the bartender's bored: “Si ... Si ... Si,” a light, snobbish Egyptian who was lonely but chary of the woman, and the two Americans.
- ‘She's pickin' 'em tonight, right on the nose,’ he said. ‘That tall black-headed frail .’
- Sullivan, the girl and the butler get to the ground. The girl wears a turtle-neck sweater, a cap slightly sideways, a torn coat, turned-up pants and sneakers.
- SULLIVAN Why don't you go back with the car... You look about as much like a boy as .
- THE GIRL All right, they'll think I'm your frail .
References
*Verb
(en verb)Anagrams
*decline
English
Noun
(en noun)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.}}
- 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
* inclineVerb
(declin)- in melancholy deep, with head declined
- And now fair Phoebus gan decline in haste / His weary wagon to the western vale.
- You have declined his means.
- He knoweth his error, but will not seek to decline it.
- a line that declines from straightness
- conduct that declines from sound morals
- Yet do I not decline from thy testimonies.
- Could I decline this dreadful hour?
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.}}
- after the first declining of a noun and a verb
- (Shakespeare)
- The team chose to decline the fifteen-yard penalty because their receiver had caught the ball for a thirty-yard gain.