declension

Other forms of declension

plural

declensions·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about declension

What does declension mean?

declension means "the inflection of nouns and pronouns and adjectives in Indo-European languages". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in declension?

declension has 3 syllables: de-clen-sion. The stress falls on "clen". In IPA it is /dəˈklɛnʃən/.

What is another word for declension?

Close synonyms include deterioration, decline in quality, worsening, descent, declivity. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is declension a common word?

declension is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.