decliner
(dɪˈklaɪnə(r))
[-er1.]
One who or that which declines.
† 1. One who turns aside, deviates, or falls away (from his duty or allegiance, or from an approved standard of conduct or belief). Obs.
| 1601 Dent Pathw. Heaven 259 Backsliders, Decliners, and cold Christians. 1651 Baxter Inf. Bapt. 193 Censured as decliners or erroneous. 1684 Renwick Serm. iv. (1776) 44 All that join with decliners in an ill time. |
2. One who refuses or waives; in Sc. Law, one who declines the jurisdiction of a judge or court.
| 1639 R. Baillie Lett. I. 161, A chief declyner of the Assemblie. 1641 Evelyn Diary (1871) 20 My Father..(who was one of the greatest decliners of it). 1748 Richardson Clarissa (1811) III. liv. 301 Do not..be so very melancholy a decliner as to prefer a shroud, when the matter you wish for is in your power. |
3. Dialling. A plane which (or a dial whose plane) ‘declines’ or deviates from the meridian or prime vertical, and therefore does not pass through any of the four cardinal points.
| [1669 Sturmy Mariner's Mag. vii. xvi. 25 For these East Recliners be in very deed South Decliners to those that live 90 deg. from us Northward or Southward.] 1684 Ibid. (ed. 3) vii. vi. 118 Direct Dials have their Poles in the Meridian or prime Vertical, Decliners have their Poles in some other Azimuth. 1703 Moxon Mech. Exerc. 311 Of Decliners there are infinite; and yet may be reduced into..1. The South Erect Plane, declining more or less towards the East or West. 2. The North Erect Plane, declining more or less towards the East or West. |