Library / English Dictionary

DWINDLE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Become smaller or lose substance

Example:

Her savings dwindled down

Synonyms:

dwindle; dwindle away; dwindle down

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "dwindle" is one way to...):

decrease; diminish; fall; lessen (decrease in size, extent, or range)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s

Derivation:

dwindling (a becoming gradually less)

Credits

 Context examples: 

As the last rays of daylight dwindled and disappeared, absolute blackness settled down on Treasure Island.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

This may mean early shifts in worker microbiota could be used as a warning indicator for colony dwindling and/or failure.

(Species Shifts in the Honey Bee Microbiome Differ with Age and Hive Role, U.S. Department of Agriculture)

The importance of the family had thus dwindled, but they still retained the old Saxon manor-house, with a couple of farms and a grove large enough to afford pannage to a hundred pigs—sylva de centum porcis, as the old family parchments describe it.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The young ladies of Highbury might have walked again in safety before their panic began, and the whole history dwindled soon into a matter of little importance but to Emma and her nephews:—in her imagination it maintained its ground, and Henry and John were still asking every day for the story of Harriet and the gipsies, and still tenaciously setting her right if she varied in the slightest particular from the original recital.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Neither, indeed, could I forbear smiling at myself, when the queen used to place me upon her hand towards a looking-glass, by which both our persons appeared before me in full view together; and there could be nothing more ridiculous than the comparison; so that I really began to imagine myself dwindled many degrees below my usual size.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

When no longer under the same roof with Edmund, she trusted that Miss Crawford would have no motive for writing strong enough to overcome the trouble, and that at Portsmouth their correspondence would dwindle into nothing.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Still the Ghost tore along, till the boat dwindled to a speck, when Wolf Larsen’s voice rang out in command and he went about on the starboard tack.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The she-wolf, the young leader on her left, and the one-eyed elder on her right, led their half of the pack down to the Mackenzie River and across into the lake country to the east. Each day this remnant of the pack dwindled.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Jo, who refused, thinking there might not be enough, for they dwindled sadly after the picking over, glanced at Laurie, but he was eating away manfully, though there was a slight pucker about his mouth and he kept his eye fixed on his plate.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I remarked this in Peggotty, too, when she came down; and I have seen it since; and I think, in the expectation of that dread surprise, all other changes and surprises dwindle into nothing.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)