Example
fall (verb)
The neutral, all-purpose swap. It takes no object.
The number of letters posted fell from 90 million to 52 million.
Written by Fizza Butool Zaidi and Ali Zaidi
12 alternatives
The neutral, all-purpose swap. It takes no object.
The number of letters posted fell from 90 million to 52 million.
Neutral, slightly more vivid than fall; good for a clear fall between two points.
Attendance dropped to 400 in March, its lowest monthly figure.
A gradual, often long-term fall. Slightly formal, which suits a report.
Coal use declined steadily over the 30-year period.
Everyday and neutral; fine in conversation, less formal in a report.
The price of phones has gone down a lot in the last few years.
A small, temporary fall, usually followed by a rise.
Visitor numbers dipped slightly in 2014 before rising again.
Don't swap blindly: Not for a large or lasting fall; dip tells the reader the change was minor.
A sudden and large fall.
Profits plunged by 60% in a single year.
The strongest: a very fast, very large fall. Keep it for the most dramatic change.
The price of solar panels plummeted between 2010 and 2015.
Don't swap blindly: Overstating a small change misreports the chart.
Fall in size: a workforce, a market, an area of forest.
The farming workforce shrank by a third over two decades.
Don't swap blindly: Not for prices, rates or temperatures.
Fall to exactly half. Precise and impressive when the figures support it.
Smoking rates among adults halved between 1990 and 2020.
Don't swap blindly: Only when the figure is close to 50% of its starting value.
Someone or something makes a figure smaller. It needs an object, or the passive.
Waste sent to landfill was reduced by 25% after the recycling scheme began.
Don't swap blindly: 'Sales reduced' is not standard English. Without a cause, write 'sales fell' or 'there was a reduction in sales'.
A sudden fall that then stays low, typical of economic data.
Car sales slumped in 2009 and remained low for two years.
Stop falling and settle at the lowest level before levelling or rising.
Unemployment bottomed out at 4% in 2019.
Don't swap blindly: It describes the end of a fall, not the fall itself.
Paraphrasing
Band tip: the public IELTS Writing band descriptors for Lexical Resource describe Band 7 as using “less common lexical items” with “some awareness of style and collocation”. A synonym that changes your meaning or breaks a collocation works against you, so choose the word that fits the sentence, not the rarest one you know.
In context
Sales of printed newspapers declined throughout the period, falling from 12 million copies a day in 2000 to just under 5 million in 2020. The sharpest change came between 2008 and 2010, when sales plunged by almost a third. Free newspapers followed a different path: their circulation dipped in 2009 but then held steady at around 1.5 million.
Fall and drop are the neutral swaps. Decline suits a gradual fall, dip a small temporary one, and plunge or plummet a sudden large one. Choose by the size and speed of the change you see.
Only with an object or in the passive: 'The council reduced fees' or 'Fees were reduced'. 'Fees reduced' on its own is a common error; write 'fees fell'.
Both describe a sudden large fall. Plummet suggests an even faster, steeper fall. Either is fine once in a report, for the most dramatic change only.
No. Dip means a small fall that usually reverses. For a large fall use drop sharply, plunge or plummet.
Practise
© 2026 BandLadder. Written and checked by the BandLadder team. You may quote or cite this page with credit to BandLadder and a link to it; republishing it in full needs our written permission. Content use policy