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wane
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
wane
I.verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
interest wanes (=becomes less)
▪ When his initial interest waned, the teacher paid more attention to him.
sb’s powers are failing/waning (=becoming less good)
▪ Mark felt that his creative powers were waning.
the moon wanes (=gets smaller each night)
▪ The August moon was waning.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
interest
▪ Nevertheless, its reception was mixed, and interest began to wane with the death of Bishop Wilkins in 1672.
▪ But the interest has waned in the last 24-48 hours and it now appears that the deal will not happen.
▪ As that interest had waned, Perrin now wanted to go back to fundamentals.
▪ Do I withdraw apparatus when interest in it wanes?
▪ It was six months before their debut album was in the shops and by that time public interest in them had waned.
▪ Thirteen years later, interest has waned in a killer dismissed by many as the least interesting of the famous assassins.
popularity
▪ Like every star before her Kylie was painfully aware that her fame and popularity could wane literally overnight.
▪ But with his popularity waning and the economy temporarily faltering, Park was in trouble even in his own entourage.
▪ The Bill's initial popularity began to wane after an intense media barrage of highly critical commercials.
wax
▪ Over the years, there have been fundamental shifts in policy and strategy as attitudes toward the rural poor wax and wane.
▪ Is it present constantly, does the sensation wax and wane, or does it come in acute attacks?
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ His popularity in the state began to wane almost immediately after the election.
▪ Some countries' taste for purely American pop culture has waned.
▪ When girls hit adolescence, their self-confidence begins to wane.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But in the waning hours Saturday night, Cox came up big.
▪ But with his popularity waning and the economy temporarily faltering, Park was in trouble even in his own entourage.
▪ Enthusiasm for it tends to wane during economic recessions.
▪ Even in the final years of the Soviet Union, the managers were stepping into the void created by waning party power.
▪ In the waning light of the spring evening, play commences in the second-grade Fathers / Students League.
▪ My enthusiasm had waned by the time the tea arrived.
▪ The smile was beginning to wane.
▪ The volume of the presiding cleric's voice waxed and waned as though he were speaking through a faulty microphone.
II.noun
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
wax and wane
▪ Although the Alsops' fortunes waxed and waned through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, certain family characteristics remained distinct.
▪ Controversy about essential hypertension has waxed and waned for a century, and what is orthodox today may change with time.
▪ Historical Romances continued to appear throughout the century, waxing and waning in numbers and popularity as public taste dictated.
▪ Is it present constantly, does the sensation wax and wane, or does it come in acute attacks?
▪ Over the years, there have been fundamental shifts in policy and strategy as attitudes toward the rural poor wax and wane.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ At the time, the hobby had been on the wane for years.
▪ But I could see that the moon above my head was really on the wane.
▪ But the conservatives' influence has lately seemed on the wane.
▪ However, his opponents are convinced that even in true-blue East Hampshire Tory popularity is on the wane.
▪ The event coincided with New Zealand on the wane and Grant Fox paying the inevitable penalty.
▪ The influence of government agents and chief headmen, on the wane since 1920, declined still further.
▪ The vocational profession of Alpine shepherd is on the wane, an arduous life with unreliable income.
▪ With violence appearing to be on the wane at the moment, he may well be right that the future looks bright.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Wane

Wane \Wane\, v. t. To cause to decrease. [Obs.]
--B. Jonson.

Wane

Wane \Wane\, n.

  1. The decrease of the illuminated part of the moon to the eye of a spectator.

  2. Decline; failure; diminution; decrease; declension.

    An age in which the church is in its wane.
    --South.

    Though the year be on the wane.
    --Keble.

  3. An inequality in a board. [Prov. Eng.]
    --Halliwell.

  4. (Forestry) The natural curvature of a log or of the edge of a board sawed from a log.

Wane

Wane \Wane\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Waned; p. pr. & vb. n. Waning.] [OE. wanien, AS. wanian, wonian, from wan, won, deficient, wanting; akin to D. wan-, G. wahnsinn, insanity, OHG. wan, wana-, lacking, wan?n to lessen, Icel. vanr lacking, Goth. vans; cf. Gr. ? bereaved, Skr. ?na wanting, inferior. ????. Cf. Want lack, and Wanton.]

  1. To be diminished; to decrease; -- contrasted with wax, and especially applied to the illuminated part of the moon.

    Like the moon, aye wax ye and wane. Waning moons their settled periods keep.
    --Addison.

  2. To decline; to fail; to sink.

    You saw but sorrow in its waning form.
    --Dryden.

    Land and trade ever will wax and wane together.
    --Sir J. Child.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
wane

Old English wanian "make or become smaller gradually, diminish, decline, fade," from Proto-Germanic *wanen (cognates: Old Saxon wanon, Old Norse vana, Old Frisian wania, Middle Dutch waenen, Old High German wanon "to wane, to grow less"), from *wano- "lacking," from PIE *we-no-, from root *eue- "to leave, abandon, give out" (see vain). Related: Waned; waning; wanes.

Wiktionary
wane

Etymology 1 n. 1 A gradual diminution in power, value, intensity etc. 2 The lunar phase during which the sun seems to illuminate less of the moon as its sunlit area becomes progressively smaller as visible from Earth. 3 (context literary English) The end of a period. 4 (context woodworking English) A rounded corner caused by lack of wood, often showing bark. vb. (label en intransitive) To progressively lose its splendor, value, ardor, power, intensity etc.; to decline. Etymology 2

alt. (context Scotland slang English) A child. n. (context Scotland slang English) A child. Etymology 3

alt. (context chiefly Northern England and Scotland obsolete English) A house or dwelling. n. (context chiefly Northern England and Scotland obsolete English) A house or dwelling.

WordNet
wane
  1. n. a gradual decline (in size or strength or power or number) [syn: ebb, ebbing]

  2. v. grow smaller; "Interest in the project waned" [syn: decline, go down]

  3. become smaller; "Interest in his novels waned" [ant: wax]

  4. decrease in phase; "the moon is waning" [ant: wax]

Wikipedia
WANE

Wane may refer to:

  • Shaun Wane (born 1964), English rugby league footballer and coach
  • Taylor Wane (born 1968), British pornographic actress and model
  • WANE-TV, a television station (channel 15) licensed to Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States
  • Wax and Wane, 1982 song from Garlands album by Scottish band Cocteau Twins
  • Wax and Wane, song from NZ/NYC musician David Watson's 'new music' composition for pipe bands, see: Bagpipes in jazz
  • Wane is the rounded edge on a piece of lumber.

Usage examples of "wane".

Waned the day and I hied me afield, and thereafter I sat with the mighty when daylight was done, But with great men beside me, midst high-hearted laughter, I deemed me of all men the gainfullest one.

I heard it, and knew no more--heard it as I sat petrified in that unknown cemetery in the hollow, amidst the crumbling stones and the falling tombs, the rank vegetation and the miasmal vapors--heard it well up from the innermost depths of that damnable open sepulcher as I watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath an accursed waning moon.

Occasionally, as the afternoon waned beyond the portals of the aviary and she would be required to return to the Sanctuary, he would begin thinking of the hopelessness of the situation and a chill would work its way into the base of his spine and crawl upwards along his back like a spider.

Bozo has gone back to the wild, with most of her litter, and Bozo, together with one of his male pups, feeling the need for human companionship again, now that the urge for domesticity had waned, took to haunting the gates of Shondakor, and finally deigned to join us in the palace as a pet of the entire court.

Carey wished someone cared that much for him, then he worried she was fretting the old gentleman to an early death, but Clyme had wanted a comfort in his waning years and he had it.

Droops in the smile of the waning moon, When it scatters through an April night The frozen dews of wrinkling blight.

One particularly severe outbreak two centuries ago had killed over half the people in the entire dukedom in a single waning.

Washington might spell the beginnings of a slow ossification into the role of dedicated administrator, and a waning of the dynamism that had helped fling humanity across the Solar System.

As the initial funders had died off and the enthusiasm of the dedicated artsy money had waned and endowment had been sought in more down-to-earth quarters, the curricular emphasis had switched to other arenas.

I watched Mercury and Venus follow the sun into the west, and I remember that the moon rose late, it was past full, a waning gibbous, the worst of shapes.

THUNDER SOUNDS LIKE kettledrums in the distance, and clouds roll past the waning moon.

My fancy never lasted longer than a week, and often waned in three or four days, and the last comer always appeared the most worthy of my attentions.

If it should come to be From the brake the Nightingale In the waste hour Crosses and troubles London Voluntaries Grave Andante con Moto Scherzando Largo e Mesto Allegro Maestoso Rhymes and Rhyhms Prologue Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade We are the Choice of the Will A desolate shore It came with the threat of a waning moon Why, my heart, do we love her so?

The moon rose high and waned, but still the Other Maumer, shivering with the cold and damp, sat on the riverbank.

Soon her struggles began to wane and she sagged down onto the rumpled bed sheet, her diaphragm heaving erratically, until her hands fell away from his hips and finally, she slipped into narcoleptic oblivion.