decline vs descend

decline

verb
  • To move downwards, to fall, to drop. 

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

  • 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. 

descend

verb
  • To pass from a higher to a lower place; to move downwards; to come or go down in any way, for example by falling, flowing, walking, climbing etc. 

  • To move toward the south, or to the southward. 

  • To fall in pitch; to pass from a higher to a lower tone. 

  • to proceed by generation or by transmission; to happen by inheritance. 

  • To go down upon or along; to pass from a higher to a lower part of 

  • to be derived (from) 

  • To enter mentally; to retire. 

  • To come down, as from a source, original, or stock 

  • To come down to a lower, less fortunate, humbler, less virtuous, or worse, state or rank; to lower or abase oneself 

  • To make an attack, or incursion, as if from a vantage ground; to come suddenly and with violence. 

  • And on the suitors let thy wrath descend. 

  • To pass from the more general or important to the specific or less important matters to be considered. 

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