Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive & transitive verb To become or make shrunken and wrinkled, often by drying.
  • intransitive & transitive verb To lose or cause to lose vitality or intensity.
  • intransitive & transitive verb To become or make much less or smaller; dwindle.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To contract; draw or be drawn into wrinkles; shrink and form corrugations, as a leaf in the hot sun, or the skin with age.
  • Synonyms To shrivel is to become wrinkled or corrugated by contraction; to shrink is, as a rule, to contract while preserving the same general form.
  • To contract into wrinkles; cause to shrink into corrugations.
  • To make narrow; limit in scope.
  • To wither; blight; render impotent.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To draw, or be drawn, into wrinkles; to shrink, and form corrugations; ; -- often with up.
  • transitive verb To cause to shrivel or contract; to cause to shrink onto corruptions.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb intransitive To collapse inward; to crumble.
  • verb intransitive To become wrinkled.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb wither, as with a loss of moisture
  • verb decrease in size, range, or extent

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

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