verb or other parts of the sentence. Number indicates whether the noun is singular or plural. Both case and number are indicated by different forms called case-number suffixes. Nouns with the same pattern of endings are called declensions (from Lat. declino, “I fall away [i.e., from the nominative case]”). There are three basic declensions in Greek. The second declension is introduced here because it is the easiest of the three to learn and because it contains a larger number of words than the others.