descending vs downward

descending

adj
  • Moving or sloping downwards. 

  • Ordered such that each element is less than or equal to the previous element. 

  • Becoming lower in pitch. 

  • Causing a sequence to follow a descending order. 

noun
  • A descent. 

downward

adj
  • Moving, sloping or oriented downward. 

  • Located at a lower level. 

adv
  • At a lower level. 

  • Southward. 

  • Toward a lower level, whether in physical space, in a hierarchy, or in amount or value. 

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