Atrophy

Don't let your muscles atrophy.

Astronauts' muscles atrophy when they spend a long time in zero gravity.

Muscle atrophy, as it's also known, is a common result of starvation and a number of very serious diseases, including cancer, diabetes and AIDS.

Other types of antisense oligonucleotides have been approved by U.S. regulators and are being used to treat the neurodegenerative disease muscular dystrophy and spinal muscular atrophy. The compound is in clinical trials for Huntington’s disease and ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Now that chatbots are going the way of Google—moving from the miraculous to the taken-for-granted—the anxiety has shifted, too, from apocalypse to atrophy. Teachers, especially, say they’re beginning to see the rot. The term for it is unlovely but not inapt: de-skilling.

Boy. I love summer vacation. I can feel my brain beginning to atrophy already.

The M10 highway looks normal enough at the southern limits of St. Petersburg, but then, with a jolt, it begins to atrophy. For the next 430 miles the surface of the highway, while paved, varies from corduroy to jaw-rattling patchwork.

Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion