declivity
1
9.6
- noun
- /dɪˈklɪvɪti/
:
declive
- He stood at the top of the dune, shielding his eyes from the glare of Tatooine's double suns, and scanned across the wide declivity in front of him.
- a steep declivity
Examples
-
The camp was in a natural declivity, and the dozen small fires would not be visible from any distance.
Fiction book (1990) -
They lived in the winter in a house on a blind street in Paris, and in the summer in a villa on the side of a cliff in Italy, and then in the old stone mill in an unexpected declivity.
Fiction book (1994) -
He walked down a gentle declivity where the street widened into an avenue called Great Polyanka and rose to the marble pylons of a new gleaming bridge.
Fiction book (2000) -
Almost without exception, however, the exploration of a valley can be accomplished only on foot, owing to the steep declivities to be traversed, the deep streams to be forded, and the absence of any trails whatsoever in the thick forest and undergrowth.
Academic text (1991) -
It wasn't until they had overflown the alleged site several times that Jaxom noticed the declivity well overgrown with grass and shrubs, with the suspicion of white glinting through the vegetation.
Fiction book (1991) -
The path down the declivity was slippery after the rain, making it difficult to walk.
-
We observed a herd of deer grazing at the bottom of the declivity near the river.
-
The hikers carefully descended the steep declivity to reach the hidden waterfall.
Synonyms
89
3.7
A movement down from a higher place to a lower place or a slope that goes down
69
3.2
How much a line or surface tilts from flat ground
7
3.5
A downward slope in the ground or surface
3
3.7
The part of a hill that slopes down to a lower level
1
9.1
A slope that goes down
A surface or area that slopes downward
Antonyms
How Steep
Surface Forms
Morphology
declivity = declive (semi-transparent) = de + cliv + ity
The derivation as declive + -ity (noun-forming) is structurally clear, but the root 'cliv' (and the adjective 'declive') is obscure to most learners, so meaning is only partially recoverable.
Etymology
Declivity comes from the Latin parts de- 'down' and clivus 'slope', so it means a 'downward slope'. Think of decline or incline, which show going down or up, so declivity is a slope that goes down.