abandon vs decline

abandon

verb
  • To desist in doing, practicing, following, holding, or adhering to; to turn away from; to permit to lapse; to renounce; to discontinue. 

  • To no longer exercise a right, title, or interest, especially with no interest of reclaiming it again; to yield; to relinquish. 

  • To give up or relinquish control of, to surrender or to give oneself over, or to yield to one's emotions. 

  • To leave behind; to desert, as in a ship, a position, or a person, typically in response to overwhelming odds or impending dangers; to forsake, in spite of a duty or responsibility. 

  • To surrender to the insurer (an insured item), so as to claim a total loss. 

noun
  • A yielding to natural impulses or inhibitions; freedom from artificial constraint, with loss of appreciation of consequences. 

decline

verb
  • To turn or bend aside; to deviate; to stray; to withdraw. 

  • To choose not to do something; refuse, forbear, refrain. 

  • To run through from first to last; to recite in order as though declining a noun. 

  • To cause to decrease or diminish. 

  • To bend downward; to bring down; to depress; to cause to bend, or fall. 

  • To move downwards, to fall, to drop. 

  • To inflect for case, number, gender, and the like. 

  • 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. 

  • To become weaker or worse. 

  • To recite all the different declined forms of (a word). 

noun
  • A weakening. 

  • Downward movement, fall. 

  • A reduction or diminution of activity. 

  • The act of declining or refusing something. 

  • A sloping downward, e.g. of a hill or road. 

How often have the words abandon and decline occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )