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decline [decline 词源字典]: decline: [14] The notion underlying decline is of ‘bending away’. It comes via Old French decliner from Latin dēclināre ‘turn aside, go down’, a compound verb formed from the prefix dē-, ‘away, aside’ and clināre ‘bend’, which also produced English incline and recline and is related to lean. Its Latin nominal derivative dēclinātiō has bifurcated in English, to produce declination [14] and, via Old French declinaison, declension [15].

The latter is used only in the specialized grammatical sense ‘set of inflectional endings of a noun’, already present in Latin, which derives from the concept that every inflected form of a word represents a ‘falling away’ from its uninflected base form (the same underlying notion appears in the term oblique case ‘any grammatical sense other than the nominative or vocative’, and indeed the word case itself, whose etymological meaning is ‘fall’; and there are perhaps traces of it in inflection, literally ‘bending’).
=> declension, incline, lean, recline[decline etymology, decline origin, 英语词源]
might: might: [OE] Might goes back ultimately to Indo- European *mag- ‘be able, have power’, the same base as produced the auxiliary verb may. The noun might was formed with the Germanic suffix *-tiz, which also gave German and Dutch macht ‘power’; and the verb might, the past form of may, contains the past inflectional suffix (in modern English -(e)d).
=> may
flexion (n.): c. 1600, "bent part," also, in grammar, "modification of part of a word," from Latin flexionem (nominative flexio) "a bending, swaying; bend, turn, curve," noun of action from past participle stem of flectere "to bend" (see flexible). Flection (18c.) is more recent, less etymological, but said to be more common in modern English, perhaps by influence of affection, direction, where the -ct- is in the Latin word. According to some modern dictionaries, flexion is "confined to anatomical contexts." Related: Flexional; flectional.
to (prep.): Old English to "in the direction of, for the purpose of, furthermore," from West Germanic *to (cognates: Old Saxon and Old Frisian to, Dutch too, Old High German zuo, German zu "to"), from PIE pronominal base *do- "to, toward, upward" (cognates: Latin donec "as long as," Old Church Slavonic do "as far as, to," Greek suffix -de "to, toward," Old Irish do, Lithuanian da-), from demonstrative *de-.

Not found in Scandinavian, where the equivalent of till (prep.) is used. In Old English, the preposition (go to town) leveled with the adverb (the door slammed to) except where the adverb retained its stress (tired and hungry too); there it came to be written with -oo (see too).

The nearly universal use of to with infinitives (to sleep, to dream, etc.) arose in Middle English out of the Old English dative use of to, and it helped drive out the Old English inflectional endings (though in this use to itself is a mere sign, without meaning).

Commonly used as a prefix in Middle English (to-hear "listen to," etc.), but few of these survive (to-do, together, and time references such as today, tonight, tomorrow -- Chaucer also has to-yeere). To and fro "side to side" is attested from mid-14c. Phrase what's it to you "how does that concern you?" (1819) is a modern form of an old question:
Huæd is ðec ðæs?
[John xxi:22, in Lindisfarne Gospel, c.950]
wolverine (n.): carnivorous mammal, 1610s, alteration of wolvering (1570s), of uncertain origin, possibly from wolv-, inflectional stem of wolf (n.); or perhaps from wolver "one who behaves like a wolf" (1590s).