What is "wasted away"

Usage examples of "wasted away".

Shrewd wasted away years ago, your father retired to Withywoods before he was killed, and Verity was an old man before his time.

Somebody had been shooting at him more than a little, and he'd wasted away some, riding all that time.

She couldn't bear to see the foals starve, but still less did she wish to watch as her friend wasted away, her strength going to feed the babies.

On the second day he was sitting up unaided and eating voraciously, by the third he was managing the ship from his litter, and on the fourth day he was on his quarterdeck once more, although his arm was in a sling and he was still pale and gaunt where the fever had wasted away the flesh from his face, but strong enough to keep on his feet for an hour at a time before resorting to the rope chair the carpenter had rigged at the rail.

Then, as the day wasted away and the sun began to set behind a flaming curtain of red dust, Zouga told them of the kraals of the Matabele, the impis trained into the most merciless killing machine Africa had ever brought forth, racing barefoot into battle behind their tall rawhide shields, the plumes nodding and streaming from their dark heads and the dazzle of their assegais lighting the plains as the stars light the night sky.

No, she reappeared not then nor during any of the four years I wasted away in a dungeon in punishment for my part in the crime.

I smiled at the familiar words, but my throat closed at how the man who said them had wasted away, and what they had come to cost me.

A tomb was set up in the middle of it, and before it crouched a woman, a hag so wasted away that her skin was a multitude of yellow wrinkles and her black shawl fit her shrunken body like a tent.

To Ashen's shock, he seemed to have wasted away in the few days since she had seen him last.