Other forms: ebbing, ebbed, ebbs
To ebb is to flow back out, as the tide does. The tide ebbed, ebb away, at a low ebb.
The ebb is the going-out tide and the flood is the coming-in one, and the pair is one of the oldest bits of English sea vocabulary. Figuratively, strength, enthusiasm and life ebb away — always gradually. At a low ebb means in a poor state. Note that the word is Old English and means going away.
1verbebbTo flow back out, as the tide does.
“We waited on the beach for the tide to ebb so we could walk out to the island.”
2verbfadeTo fade gradually away.
“As the evening wore on, her energy began to ebb away.”
ebb is a flowing back.
Old English ebba comes from a root meaning off or away. The flood tide is its opposite in the same old vocabulary.
Proto-Germanic
*abjô
Proto-West Germanic
*abbjā
Old English
ebba — ebb, tide
Middle English
ebbe
English, today
ebb
From Middle English ebbe, from Old English ebba (“ebb, tide”), from Proto-West Germanic abbjā, from Proto-Germanic abjô, abjǭ, from Proto-Germanic ab (“off, away”), from Proto-Indo-European apó. See also West Frisian ebbe, Dutch eb, German Ebbe, Danish ebbe, Old Norse efja (“countercurrent”), Old English af. More at of, off.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sea & Sailing