dwindle
/ˈdwɪn.dəl/ verb
Forms dwindles dwindling dwindled
- verb (intransitive) To decrease, shrink, diminish, reduce in size or intensity. “Their supplies began to dwindle after a week.”
- verb (intransitive, figuratively) To fall away in quality; degenerate, sink.
- verb (transitive) To lessen; to bring low.
- verb To break up or disperse.
Synonyms
fade away peter out spin down trail off wane wanse dwindle away dwindle down
Etymology
Frequentative form of dwine, from Middle English dwynen, from Old English dwīnan (“to waste away”), from Proto-West Germanic *dwīnan, from Proto-Germanic *dwīnaną. It is equivalent to dwine + -le, akin to Old Norse dvena, dvína, Dutch verdwijnen (“to disappear, dwindle”).
Webster’s 1913
- verb To diminish; to become less; to shrink; to waste or consume away; to become degenerate; to fall away.
- verb To make less; to bring low. Our drooping days are dwindled down to naught. Thomson.
- verb To break; to disperse. [R.] Clarendon.
- noun The process of dwindling; dwindlement; decline; degeneracy.
Etymology [From OE. dwinen to languish, waste away, AS. dwinan; akin to LG. dwinen, D. dwijnen to vanish, Icel. dvina to cease, dwindle, Sw. tvina; of uncertain origin. The suffix -le, preceded by d excrescent after n, is added to the root with a diminutive force.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “dwindle”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details