decline vs succeed

decline

verb
  • To run through from first to last; to recite in order as though declining a noun. 

  • To choose not to do something; refuse, forbear, refrain. 

  • 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). 

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. 

succeed

verb
  • To come after or follow; to be subsequent or consequent; (often with to). 

  • To ascend the throne after the removal or death of the occupant. 

  • To prevail in obtaining an intended objective or accomplishment; to prosper as a result or conclusion of a particular effort. 

  • To follow something in sequence or time. 

  • To prosper or attain success and beneficial results in general. 

  • To support; to prosper; to promote or give success to. 

  • To descend, as an estate or an heirloom, in the same family; to devolve; (often with to). 

  • To come in the place of another person, thing, or event; to come next in the usual, natural, or prescribed course of things; to follow; hence, to come next in the possession of anything; (often with to). 

  • To replace or supplant someone in order vis-à-vis an office, position, or title. 

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