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FADING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Weakening in force or intensity
Example:
attenuation in the volume of the sound
Synonyms:
attenuation; fading
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("fading" is a kind of...):
weakening (becoming weaker)
Derivation:
fade (become feeble)
fade (lose freshness, vigor, or vitality)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb fade
Context examples:
I thought all this very pretty and engaging, and Steerforth seemed to think so too, as we looked after them fading away in the light of a young moon.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Every instant now was in favour of Berks, and already his breathing was easier and the bluish tinge fading from his face.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Gullies are distinct from another type of feature on Martian slopes, streaks called recurring slope lineae, or RSL, which are distinguished by seasonal darkening and fading, rather than characteristics of how the ground is shaped.
(Mars Gullies Likely Not Formed by Liquid Water, NASA)
The light was just fading.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
A team of researchers pointed the telescope at GK Persei, an object that became a sensation in the astronomical world in 1901 when it suddenly appeared as one of the brightest stars in the sky for a few days, before gradually fading away in brightness.
("Mini Supernova" Explosion Could Have Big Impact, NASA)
As twilight fell the old bull stood with lowered head, watching his mates—the cows he had known, the calves he had fathered, the bulls he had mastered—as they shambled on at a rapid pace through the fading light.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
In that field, Adele, I was walking late one evening about a fortnight since—the evening of the day you helped me to make hay in the orchard meadows; and, as I was tired with raking swaths, I sat down to rest me on a stile; and there I took out a little book and a pencil, and began to write about a misfortune that befell me long ago, and a wish I had for happy days to come: I was writing away very fast, though daylight was fading from the leaf, when something came up the path and stopped two yards off me.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
It was Sunday, and the whole time between morning and afternoon service was required by the general in exercise abroad or eating cold meat at home; and great as was Catherine's curiosity, her courage was not equal to a wish of exploring them after dinner, either by the fading light of the sky between six and seven o'clock, or by the yet more partial though stronger illumination of a treacherous lamp.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
And his father had worked to the last fading gasp; the horned growth on his hands must have been half an inch thick when he died.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
The mad turmoil, the mixture of races, and the fading light, were all in favor of the four who alone knew their own purpose among the vast uncertain multitude.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
