decline vs fade

decline

verb
  • To cause to decrease or diminish. 

  • 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 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). 

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. 

fade

verb
  • To cause to fade. 

  • To grow weak; to lose strength; to decay; to perish gradually; to wither, as a plant. 

  • To hit the ball with the shot called a fade. 

  • To bet against. 

  • To lose freshness, color, or brightness; to become faint in hue or tint; hence, to be wanting in color. 

  • To sink away; to disappear gradually; to grow dim; to vanish. 

noun
  • A haircut where the hair is short or shaved on the sides of the head and longer on top. See also high-top fade and low fade. 

  • The act of disappearing from a place so as not to be found; covert departure. 

  • A golf shot that curves intentionally to the player's right (if they are right-handed) or to the left (if left-handed). 

  • A fight. 

  • A gradual decrease in the brightness of a shot or the volume of sound or music (as a means of cutting to a new scene or starting a new song). 

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