Other forms: inclined, inclines, inclining
An incline is a slope. A stretch of road or track that rises rather than running level.
Railways and roads use the word technically, and a steep incline is a real engineering problem. The verb, stressed on the second syllable, means to lean, so you incline your head in a slight bow. From there comes the far commoner figurative sense, since being inclined to think something means leaning towards that view. The noun inclination covers both a slope and a tendency, and disinclined means not wanting to at all.
1nouninclineA slope, especially of a road or track.
“The lorry laboured up the incline.”
2verbleanTo lean or tend towards something.
“I incline to the view that it was an accident.”
Also accepted in games: inclination
Old French
encliner
Middle English
enclinen
English, today
incline
From Middle English enclinen, from Old French encliner. From Middle English enclinen, from Old French encliner (modern incliner), from Latin inclīnō (“incline, tilt”), from in- + clīnō (compare -cline), from Proto-Indo-European ḱley- (English lean).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA