The Collaborative International Dictionary
Shrivel \Shriv"el\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Shriveledor Shrivelled; p. pr. & vb. n. Shriveling or Shrivelling.] [Probably akin to shrimp, shrink; cf. dial. AS. screpa to pine away, Norw. skrypa to waste, skryp, skryv, transitory, frail, Sw. skr["o]pling feeble, Dan. skr["o]belig, Icel. skrj?pr brittle, frail.] To draw, or be drawn, into wrinkles; to shrink, and form corrugations; as, a leaf shriveles in the hot sun; the skin shrivels with age; -- often with up.
Wiktionary
alt. (present participle of shrivel English) vb. (present participle of shrivel English)
Usage examples of "shriveling".
Implosions: a shrinking forehead, a shriveling body, an apelike face, and at last the great anatomical redesign to restore the wide-eyed creatures that lived in the trees.
There had been a hideous shriveling, leaving an empty, echoing world, through which people walked as if bewildered, quickly forgetting that the great exotic beasts and different kinds of people had even existed.
The last of the shriveling mole folk, their tiny hearts rattling heroically, had been as small as a centimeter.
And back further, shrinking and shriveling, eyes growing wider, minds simpler—" The last common ancestor of humans and another hominid species, the Neandertals, was a quarter of a million years deep.
How she must tremble to live among these dandified, morose lords and ladies, these blazing-eyed killers with their blood full of dreams and strange weathers, and thoughts like black spidery stars shriveling in their brains.
He snatched the torch from Giselle’s hand, keeping it well away from his body, his mind shriveling with fright at the nearness of the dancing flame, the crackling flower of death, but willing in his desperation to risk burning.
She turned a shriveling stare upon him, and he soon found himself absorbed by the shifts of color within the irises, the minute contractions and expansions of the pupils.
Agenor’s lips parted in a slowly developing smile to reveal his fangs, and Beheim felt that he was shriveling away inside himself, as helpless as a bird before a serpent.
Images began to invade his consciousness, accompanied by shrieks tinged with fear and anger, shriveling his nerves.
I stared at one skeletal hand of the being, which hung over the edge of the table, white and like some shriveling creature of the sea beneath a merciless sun on sand by the oceanside.
The pile of heads lay as before, and some at random, shriveling, drying up, the acrid smoke still rising from them, and the light above had darkened, yet it was still golden, golden beyond the broken stair, and the jagged broken spears, golden with the last burnt dregs of the late afternoon.
Hissune, shriveling under the fierce supercilious stares of the gigantic four-armed beings, had to fight back the impulse to drop to his knees and beg their forgiveness.
No, the first sign of trouble was not the purple rain but the shriveling of the sensitivos in Etowan Elacca's garden.
The sense of all the centuries accreted in the scales made him dizzy, and he found he could not turn his head but could only stare at the panorama, his soul shriveling with a comprehension of the timelessness and bulk of this creature to which he clung like a fly.
The thought that even now Hendy lay shriveling in the dread waters of the Well of Life sickened me to my core.