Decline vs Spurn - What's the difference?
decline | spurn |
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.
(ambitransitive) To reject disdainfully; contemn; scorn.
* Shakespeare
* Shakespeare
* John Locke
To reject something by pushing it away with the foot.
* Shakespeare
To waste; fail to make the most of (an opportunity)
* {{quote-news
, year=2011
, date=September 28
, author=Tom Rostance
, title=Arsenal 2 - 1 Olympiakos
, work=BBC Sport
(obsolete) To kick or toss up the heels.
* Chaucer
* Gay
An act of spurning; a scornful rejection.
A kick; a blow with the foot.
* Milton
(obsolete) Disdainful rejection; contemptuous treatment.
* Shakespeare
A body of coal left to sustain an overhanging mass.
As verbs the difference between decline and spurn
is that decline is while spurn is (ambitransitive) to reject disdainfully; contemn; scorn.As an adjective decline
is declined.As a noun spurn is
an act of spurning; a scornful rejection.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.
Derived terms
* declension * declinationExternal links
* * * ----spurn
English
Verb
(en verb)- to spurn at your most royal image
- What safe and nicely I might well delay / By rule of knighthood, I disdain and spurn .
- Domestics will pay a more cheerful service when they find themselves not spurned because fortune has laid them at their master's feet.
- I spurn thee like a cur out of my way.
citation, page= , passage=Marouane Chamakh then spurned a great chance to kill the game off when he ran onto Andrey Arshavin's lofted through ball but shanked his shot horribly across the face of goal.}}
- The miller spurned at a stone.
- The drunken chairman in the kennel spurns .
Derived terms
* spurnerNoun
(en noun)- What defence can properly be used in such a despicable encounter as this but either the slap or the spurn ?
- The insolence of office and the spurns / That patient merit of the unworthy takes.