Dwindle

verb

verb ·2 syllables ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To decrease, shrink, diminish, reduce in size or intensity. intransitive

    "Their supplies began to dwindle after a week."

  2. 2
    become smaller or lose substance wordnet
  3. 3
    To fall away in quality; degenerate, sink. figuratively, intransitive

    "VVearie Seu'nights, nine times nine, / Shall he dvvindle, peake, and pine: […]"

  4. 4
    To lessen; to bring low. transitive

    "Our drooping days are dwindled down to nought."

  5. 5
    To break up or disperse.

    "there were only five hundred foot and three hundred horse left with him, for the blocking of Plymouth; the rest were dwindled away"

Synonyms

All synonyms
declinedecreasediminishfall awayfall offlessen

Example

More examples

"We've made great inroads into solving the problem, but our resources dwindle and the end is not in sight."

Etymology

Frequentative form of dwine, from Middle English dwinen, 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”).

Related phrases

fall dwindle diseasebreak upfall away

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.