buckle vs decline

buckle

verb
  • To yield; to give way; to cease opposing. 

  • To buckle down; to apply oneself. 

  • To distort or collapse under physical pressure; especially, of a slender structure in compression. 

  • To give in; to react suddenly or adversely to stress or pressure (of a person). 

  • To make bend; to cause to become distorted. 

  • To fasten using a buckle. 

  • To unite in marriage. 

noun
  • A contorted expression, as of the face. 

  • A clasp used for fastening two things together, such as the ends of a belt, or for retaining the end of a strap. 

  • A curl of hair, especially a kind of crisp curl formerly worn; also, the state of being curled. 

  • An upward, elongated displacement of a roof membrane frequently occurring over insulation or deck joints. A buckle may be an indication of movement with the roof assembly. 

  • The brisure of an eighth daughter. 

  • A cake baked with fresh fruit and a streusel topping. 

  • A distortion, bulge, bend, or kink, as in a saw blade or a plate of sheet metal. 

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 buckle and decline occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )