decline vs pace

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. 

pace

verb
  • To walk back and forth in a small distance. 

  • To set the speed in a race. 

  • To measure by walking. 

noun
  • Any of various gaits of a horse, specifically a 2-beat, lateral gait. 

  • The distance covered in a step (or sometimes two), either vaguely or according to various specific set measurements. 

  • A group of donkeys. 

  • Easter. 

  • A step taken with the foot. 

  • A manner of walking, running or dancing; the rate or style of how someone moves with their feet. 

  • Speed or velocity in general. 

  • A measure of the hardness of a pitch and of the tendency of a cricket ball to maintain its speed after bouncing. 

prep
  • With all due respect to. 

adj
  • Describing a bowler who bowls fast balls. 

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