What's the difference between decline and downfall?

Decline


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To bend, or lean downward; to take a downward direction; to bend over or hang down, as from weakness, weariness, despondency, etc.; to condescend.
  • (v. i.) To tend or draw towards a close, decay, or extinction; to tend to a less perfect state; to become diminished or impaired; to fail; to sink; to diminish; to lessen; as, the day declines; virtue declines; religion declines; business declines.
  • (v. i.) To turn or bend aside; to deviate; to stray; to withdraw; as, a line that declines from straightness; conduct that declines from sound morals.
  • (v. i.) To turn away; to shun; to refuse; -- the opposite of accept or consent; as, he declined, upon principle.
  • (v. t.) To bend downward; to bring down; to depress; to cause to bend, or fall.
  • (v. t.) To cause to decrease or diminish.
  • (v. t.) To put or turn aside; to turn off or away from; to refuse to undertake or comply with; reject; to shun; to avoid; as, to decline an offer; to decline a contest; he declined any participation with them.
  • (v. t.) To inflect, or rehearse in order the changes of grammatical form of; as, to decline a noun or an adjective.
  • (v. t.) To run through from first to last; to repeat like a schoolboy declining a noun.
  • (v. i.) A falling off; a tendency to a worse state; diminution or decay; deterioration; also, the period when a thing is tending toward extinction or a less perfect state; as, the decline of life; the decline of strength; the decline of virtue and religion.
  • (v. i.) That period of a disorder or paroxysm when the symptoms begin to abate in violence; as, the decline of a fever.
  • (v. i.) A gradual sinking and wasting away of the physical faculties; any wasting disease, esp. pulmonary consumption; as, to die of a decline.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Direct fetal digitalization led to a reduction in umbilical artery resistance, a decline in the abdominal circumference from 20.3 to 17.8 cm, and resolution of the ascites within 72 h. Despite this dramatic response to therapy, fetal death occurred on day 5 of treatment.
  • (2) This trend appeared to reverse itself in the low dose animals after 3 hr, whereas in the high dose group, cardiac output continued to decline.
  • (3) Our results suggest that the peripheral sensitivity to hypoxia declined more than that to CO2, implying a peripheral chemoreceptor origin for hypoxic ventilatory decline.
  • (4) By 24 hr, rough endoplasmic reticulum in thecal cells increased from 4.2 to 7% of cell volume, while the amount in granulosa cells increased from less than 3.5% to more than 10%; the quantity remained relatively constant in the theca but declined to prestimulation values in the granulosa layer.
  • (5) Here we show that this induction of AP-2 mRNA is at the level of transcription and is transient, reaching a peak 48-72 hr after the addition of RA and declining thereafter, even in the continuous presence of RA.
  • (6) We studied the hemodynamic changes caused by bronchoscopy under LA in mechanically ventilated patients and the effect of LA on the endoscopic decline in arterial pO2.
  • (7) Comparison of developmental series of D. merriami and T. bottae revealed that the decline of the artery in the latter species is preceded by a greater degree of arterial coarctation, or narrowing, as it passes though the developing stapes.
  • (8) Foetal serum TSH concentration declined significantly between 20 and 21 days of gestation, reached a low level at delivery, and remained low for several days after birth.
  • (9) The decline in the frequency of serious complications was primarily due to a decrease in the proportion of patients with open fractures treated with plate osteosynthesis from nearly 50% to 19%.
  • (10) Both gp175 and gp250 showed the greatest increase in fucosylation at 10(-5) M, which was also the dose at which RA induced laminin maximally, while the fucosylation of gp400 was greatest at 10(-8) M RA and declined at higher concentrations.
  • (11) Lambing rates approach 1.5 lambs per ewe per year, but a death rate of 23 per cent and an offtake of 27 per cent, means that flock numbers are probably slightly declining.
  • (12) In the absence of haemodialysis, the decline in plasma concentrations of lisinopril and enalaprilat was extremely slow and plasma concentrations were generally high.
  • (13) Steroid-treated steers showed a slight decline in synthesis which was significant (P less than 0.05) at week +5 post-implant while amino acid oxidation was significantly lower at weeks +2 (P less than 0.01) and +5 (P less than 0.05) compared with control animals.
  • (14) Following thawing, the initial motility index (MI) scores of mf cryopreserved by either method were not significantly different from untreated controls; however, over a period of 15 days in culture the MI scores of both cryopreserved groups showed a small but significant overall decline, with the methanol technique producing the lowest scores.
  • (15) The last stems from trends such as declining birth rate, an increasingly mobile society, diminished importance of the nuclear family, and the diminishing attractiveness of professions involved with providing maintenance care.
  • (16) Both strong-stop DNAs are made early during in vitro reactions and decline in concentration later, consistent with postulated roles as initiators of long minus- and plus-strand DNA.
  • (17) Further, four of five patients long after PTRA remained normotensive, and in all patients plasma renin levels declined.
  • (18) Initial exposure of cells to low concentrations of either H2O2 or xanthine oxidase resulted in a transient increase in membrane potential relative to control cells (P less than 0.001), followed by an exponential decline in potential (P less than 0.001).
  • (19) How big tobacco lost its final fight for hearts, lungs and minds Read more Shares in Imperial closed down 1% and British American Tobacco lost 0.75%, both underperforming the FTSE100’s 0.3% decline.
  • (20) However, cAMP also has posttranscriptional effects on the enzyme's synthesis, as evidenced by the 4- to 5-fold enhanced decline seen when cultured hepatoma cells are exposed to cAMP and transcription is inhibited.

Downfall


Definition:

  • (n.) A sudden fall; a body of things falling.
  • (n.) A sudden descent from rank or state, reputation or happiness; destruction; ruin.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "The Mayans couldn't even predict their own downfall, could they?"
  • (2) The trial, originally expected to be staid, has exposed severe dysfunction within Bo's family and detailed the complicated tangle of allegiances and affairs that led to his downfall .
  • (3) The imposition of a poll tax on the Scots in 1989 contributed to Margaret Thatcher's downfall and all but wiped out Scottish Toryism.
  • (4) Mal Brough has vowed to stare down calls to resign over his role in the downfall of the former speaker Peter Slipper as the Labor party seeks to build pressure on Malcolm Turnbull for backing the special minister of state.
  • (5) Vladimir Putin painted a colourful picture of Russia's protesters on Thursday, describing them as agents of the west, attending useless demonstrations with condoms pinned to their chests as they sought the downfall of the motherland.
  • (6) Martin Kyrle, 79, a former mayor of Eastleigh and an active member of the Liberal Democrat party for 55 years, attributes Huhne's downfall to "a personal flaw.
  • (7) The 2012 rebellion was partly an unintended consequence of Muammar Gaddafi's downfall in Libya.
  • (8) Zhao, who was kept under intense surveillance at his home after his downfall and whose excursions and visitors were vetted, recorded his memoirs in such secrecy that even family members were unaware of his project.
  • (9) 'No,' he said with his usual solemn deliberation, 'it was the downfall of a great people and a great civilisation.'
  • (10) As ruthless as Liverpool were with their finishing, in particular the irrepressible Luis Suárez , who scored twice to take his tally for the season to 22, Stoke were guilty of some calamitous defending and contributed largely to their own downfall.
  • (11) More than 15 million Egyptians have signed a petition calling for the president's downfall, furious at Morsi's unilateralism and impatient at plummeting living standards.
  • (12) It never does | Lenore Taylor Read more Jamie Briggs resigned as the minister for cities and the built environment after “inappropriate” conduct towards a staffer during an official visit to Hong Kong and Mal Brough stood aside as special minister of state pending a police investigation into his alleged role in the downfall of Peter Slipper.
  • (13) Nokia's downfall came about because its Symbian smartphone software was awash with redundancy and complexity.
  • (14) Thatcher secured her position over more than a decade in power through a brutal belief in her own outlook, a belief that became sclerotic, and led to her downfall.
  • (15) Mal Brough faces fresh parliamentary pressure over his role in the downfall of the former speaker Peter Slipper , after his attempt to walk away from a key admission was undermined by 60 Minutes releasing the unedited interview exchange.
  • (16) Macmillan and Thatcher paid with their jobs for being too brutal; Blair's downfall at the hands of Brown's acolytes was, to some extent at least, a consequence of him not being brutal enough.
  • (17) Today Luzhkov named Medvedev's press secretary, Natalia Timakova, and a Kremlin ideologist, Vladislav Surkov, as plotters of his downfall.
  • (18) The downfall of Sepp Blatter and the disgraced Fifa president’s one-time heir apparent, Michel Platini , is all but complete after both were banned from football for eight years by the world governing body’s own ethics committee.
  • (19) An early example of such alteration was the conversion to desert of the rich Tigris and Euphrates valleys through erosion and salt accumulation resulting from faulty irrigation practices that caused the downfall of the great Mesopotamian civilization.
  • (20) When asked if studio Fox were bothered by this he claimed: “They never said anything!” Despite his new project, Emmerich believes that “sequels are the downfall of films”.