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dwindle

UK/ˈdwɪn.dəl/US/ˈdwɪn.dəl/
verbB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,897 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: dwindled, dwindling, dwindles

To dwindle is to grow steadily smaller until almost nothing is left. Numbers dwindled, dwindling supplies, dwindle away.

The slowness is the point — a thing that collapses does not dwindle. It is a frequentative of an old verb dwine, meaning to waste away, which has otherwise disappeared. Note the -le ending, which in English often marks repeated small action.

Definitions of dwindle

  1. 1verbdwindleTo grow steadily smaller until almost nothing is left.B2+

    “The crowd dwindled as the rain grew heavier.”

dwindle is a shrinking.

Where it comes from

A frequentative of dwine, from Old English dwinan, to waste away. Only the longer form survives.

  1. Proto-Germanic

    *dwīnaną

  2. Proto-West Germanic

    *dwīnan

  3. Old English

    dwīnan — to waste away

  4. Middle English

    dwynen

  5. English, today

    dwindle

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”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Verbs

Practise this word

dwindle in the wild

  • Investors saw their thousands of dollars dwindle to pennies.

    British Columbia Resources Investment Corporation

  • In the 1990s its readership started to dwindle and in 2003 its publisher was declared bankrupt.

    DV (newspaper)

  • Today, they are prevalent in Fukuoka, but continue to dwindle.

    Yatai (food cart)

  • The decline of fishing in general and of the local population has caused the village to dwindle.

    Minturn, Maine

  • While the population continues to grow, civil war and Soviet efforts to assimilate the Bartangi or move them to cities have caused the language to dwindle.

    Bartangi language

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.