Gradually lessen

Usage examples of abate.

The duration of the siege has done nothing to abate the groundswell of support for Abies in and around this tiny Northwestern hamlet.

Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that through the strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb-- one engaged forward and the other aft--the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails were cut adrift from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward, like the feathers of an albatross, which sometimes are cast to the winds when that storm-tossed bird is on the wing.

I have never seen this adventurer without his being in a desperate state of impecuniosity, but he would never learn to abate his luxurious habits, and always managed to find some way or other out of his difficulties.

Such costly justice might tend to abate the spirit of litigation, but the unequal pressure serves only to increase the influence of the rich, and to aggravate the misery of the poor.

On the first attack, they abandoned their ensigns, threw down their arms, and dispersed on all sides with an active speed, which abated the loss, whilst it aggravated the shame, of their defeat.

My anger began to abate, and as I passed near the window I saw the carriage I had ordered waiting for me with a pair of good horses.

I pointed it out to her, but she answered very curtly that she could not abate one sou.

The fever abated in forty-eight hours, but left me in such a state of weakness that I was kept to my bed for a whole week, and could not go to Aranjuez till Holy Saturday.

By the time I reached my doss, the frequency of the depressive episodes had decreased, and their impact had abated drastically.

Worcester sent the Dryad away for Medina, called the Polyphemus in and stood eastward with her, the breeze abating with the close of day.

That pass was a march of at least thirty miles, once the Edder Forest was circled, and until the storms abated and the thaw that often came at midwinter melted off some of the snow and compacted the rest, the march would be impossible.

Age abates the vigor of the executive faculties, and old people manifest not only bodily infirmities, but the relaxing and enfeebling influences proceeding from the lower portions of the brain.

These rains being abated by the twenty-sixth day of November, colonel Coote directed the engineers to pitch upon proper places for erecting batteries that should enfilade or flank the works of the garrison, without exposing their own men to any severe fire from the enemy.

We returned to Rome, and for the three hours that she was with me in my vis-a-vis, Lucrezia had no reason to think that my ardour was at all abated.

The storm abated just as the innocent parchment was writhing on the fire, and the sailors, believing that the spirits of hell had been exorcised, thought no more of getting rid of my person, and after a prosperous voyage of a week we cast anchor at Corfu.