decline vs ridge

decline

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

  • A weakening. 

  • Downward movement, fall. 

  • A reduction or diminution of activity. 

  • The act of declining or refusing something. 

verb
  • 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 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). 

ridge

noun
  • The line along which two sloping surfaces meet which diverge towards the ground. 

  • A chain of hills. 

  • A chain of mountains. 

  • The back of any animal; especially the upper or projecting part of the back of a quadruped. 

  • Any extended protuberance; a projecting line or strip. 

  • A long narrow elevation on an ocean bottom. 

  • The highest portion of the glacis proceeding from the salient angle of the covered way. 

  • An elongated region of high atmospheric pressure. 

  • The highest point on a roof, represented by a horizontal line where two roof areas intersect, running the length of the area. 

verb
  • To form into a ridge 

  • To extend in ridges 

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