a class of nouns or pronouns or adjectives in Indo-European languages having the same (or very similar) inflectional forms; "the first declension in Latin"
The form of the inflection of a word declined by cases; as, the first or the second declension of nouns, adjectives, etc
The movement in New England away from the ideals of the founding fathers, which gave rise to tensions between settlers who adhered to the original mission and those who were attracted to commercial values
A term associated with the Massachusetts Bay Colony, referring to the declining zeal of later generations or movement away from the utopian ideals of those Puritan leaders, such as John Winthrop, who founded the colony As an example of declension, see half‑way covenant
{i} (Grammar) variation of the form (of a noun, verb, etc.); decline, descent, slope
Group sharing common inflections to which an OE noun or adjective belongs Each of the columns on the item-arrangement grammar shows a declension's basic pattern The largest noun declension in OE was the a-stem strong masculine nouns