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wane

Pronunciation: /weɪn/

The English word “wane” has 12 meanings listed here.

noun

  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. The end of a period.
  4. A rounded corner caused by lack of wood, often showing bark.
  5. A child.
  6. A house or dwelling.

verb

  1. To progressively lose its splendor, value, ardor, power, intensity etc.; to decline.
  2. For light to dim or diminish in strength.
  3. For the Moon to pass through the phases of its monthly cycle where its surface is less and less visible.
  4. Said of a time period that comes to an end.
  5. To decrease physically in size, amount, numbers or surface.
  6. To cause to decrease.

Etymology

From Middle English wane, from Old English wana (“defect, shortage”), from Proto-West Germanic *wanō, from Proto-Germanic *wanô, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- (“to leave, abandon; empty, deserted”). Cognates See also wan-, want, and waste. Compare also Dutch waan (“insanity”) and German Wahn (“insanity”) deprecated defect, Old Norse vanr (“lacking”) ( > Danish prefix van-, only found in…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.