The Collaborative International Dictionary
Decrease \De*crease"\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Decreased; p. pr. & vb. n. Decreasing.] [OE. decrecen, fr. OF. decreistre, F. d['e]cro[^i]tre, or from the OF. noun (see Decrease, n.), fr. L. decrescere to grow less; de + crescere to grow. See Crescent, and cf. Increase.] To grow less, -- opposed to increase; to be diminished gradually, in size, degree, number, duration, etc., or in strength, quality, or excellence; as, they days decrease in length from June to December.
He must increase, but I must decrease.
--John iii.
30.
Syn: To Decrease, Diminish.
Usage: Things usually decrease or fall off by degrees, and from within, or through some cause which is imperceptible; as, the flood decreases; the cold decreases; their affection has decreased. Things commonly diminish by an influence from without, or one which is apparent; as, the army was diminished by disease; his property is diminishing through extravagance; their affection has diminished since their separation their separation. The turn of thought, however, is often such that these words may be interchanged.
The olive leaf, which certainly them told
The flood decreased.
--Drayton.
Crete's ample fields diminish to our eye;
Before the Boreal blasts the vessels fly.
--Pope.
Decreasing \De*creas"ing\, a. Becoming less and less; diminishing. -- De*creas"ing*ly, adv.
Decreasing series (Math.), a series in which each term is numerically smaller than the preceding term.
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of decrease English)
WordNet
adj. becoming less or smaller [ant: increasing]
music [ant: increasing]
Usage examples of "decreasing".
It is thought to achieve this in several ways, including making platelets less sticky and decreasing inflammation in the arteries.
By decreasing the inflammation with steroids, you can often decrease the pain associated with the inflammation.
As we turn down the intensity of the light source we now know that we are decreasing the number of photons it emits.
Garden-hose universe in which the radius of the circular dimension is shorter than the Planck length and is decreasing are absolutely identical to physical processes in which the circular dimension is longer than the Planck length and increasing!
Even if you clean your cluttered desk, decreasing its entropy, the total entropy, including that of your body and the air in the room, actually increases.
He got up and used the chamber pot, trying to remember what Xaefyer had said about the recharge time decreasing for the next few months.
Otherwise Chatterford should continue just as it is, the soirees decreasing in frequency until they simply lapse, the entertainment staff being transferred to Joy Hall.
Industrial and tourist development and other economies helped stop the population decreasing on some islands after the 1970s, and selectively it even began to grow again, but the highest numbers reached at the end of the nineteen country and in the first half of the twentieth have not yet been equalled except in Rab, where the population has constantly increased since modern population censuses were introduced in 1857.
Yugoslavia that still had a common Yugoslav representation, although with decreasing authority and unity.
In reply, it may be said that the expense will decrease steadily, when segregation is viewed as a long-time investment, because the number of future wards of the state of any particular type will be decreasing every year.
This test was taken with four successive dumb-bells of decreasing weight, viz.
In the United Kingdom, where these diseases are decreasing, there has been no material increase in the use of tobacco, and the per capita consumption is less than one-third that of the United States.
If you add muscle mass, you can actually gain weight, while decreasing your body fat percentage.
The correlation was clearly demonstrated in the recent four-year Lyon Heart Study showing a 65 percent reduction in fatal attacks primarily achieved by increasing your Omega-3 fatty acid intake and simultaneously decreasing your Omega-6 intake.
Unfortunately, the alcohol extraction also removes the phytoestrogens, which are beneficial for promoting estrogen-like activity and decreasing insulin response.