Home / Words / dwindleNo. 0097

dwindle

/ˈdwɪndəl//ˈdwɪndəl/·verb
to become gradually smaller or fewer until little or nothing is left
Fig. 1 — The hourglass on the shelf never does anything sudden.
01Definition

To dwindle is to grow steadily less and less — not cut down in one blow but leaking away: savings dwindle, crowds dwindle, hopes and fish stocks dwindle. The word is built on the obsolete verb dwine, 'to waste away', and it keeps that dying fall: what dwindles is on its way toward almost nothing, gradually enough that no single moment looks like the loss. Its favourite companions are quantities — supplies, numbers, reserves — rather than solid objects; a queue can dwindle, a sweater cannot.

02In use
  • iTheir savings dwindled to almost nothing during the second winter.
  • iiThe crowd dwindled until only a handful of supporters remained.
  • iiiWater reserves dwindle fast once the dry season sets in.
03Collocations
  • dwindling supplies
  • dwindle to nothing
  • dwindling numbers
  • savings dwindle
  • dwindling hopes

Family dwindling (adjective)

04Relations

=diminish, decline, shrink, fade, ebb

≠grow, surge, proliferate

06TOEFL & IELTS

A high-value trend verb: in IELTS Task 1 and TOEFL lectures it describes numbers that fall gradually and keep falling — audiences dwindle, stocks dwindle, funding dwindles. Two usage points earn marks: it is intransitive (things dwindle; you do not 'dwindle something'), and it already contains the downward direction, so 'dwindle down' is redundant — plain dwindle, or dwindle to a trickle / to nothing, is the exam-clean form. The participle dwindling works hard as an adjective: dwindling resources.

07Asked
What kinds of things dwindle?
Quantities, not solid objects: supplies, savings, reserves, crowds, populations, hopes, enthusiasm. The word wants something countable or measurable that can slip away bit by bit — 'the audience dwindled', 'their lead dwindled to two points'. A physical thing can only dwindle through its amount: a woodpile dwindles because logs keep leaving it, but a single log never dwindles — it shrinks or burns down.
Is 'dwindle down' correct, or is it redundant?
Strictly redundant — dwindle already carries the downward slide, so 'dwindle down' says down twice. You will hear it in speech, where the extra word adds rhythm, but edited prose and exam writing drop it: supplies dwindle, or dwindle to nothing, or dwindle from fifty to five. If you want the direction spelled out, the idiomatic partner is 'to': dwindled to a trickle.
Where does dwindle come from?
From the obsolete English verb dwine, 'to waste away, pine' — Old English dwīnan, from a root tied to dying down. Dwindle is its diminutive: to waste away little by little. Shakespeare helped fix it in the language ('bate' and 'dwindle' in Henry IV), and the ancestry explains the word's mood: what dwindles is quietly wasting toward nothing, as the sand in the scene above runs toward an empty bulb.
Can you dwindle something, or do things dwindle by themselves?
Things dwindle by themselves — in modern usage the verb is effectively intransitive. Money dwindles; you do not 'dwindle your money' (a transitive sense survives in some dictionaries, but it is rare enough to avoid in exam writing). If you need the doing-word, reach for transitive cousins: deplete the reserves, run down the stock. That is what makes dwindle useful in trend writing: it reports the slide without pointing at an actor.
What is the difference between dwindle and diminish?
Both mean lessen, but dwindle is the slower, sadder slope: gradual, continuous, headed toward nothing. Diminish is the neutral umbrella for any reduction in size, degree or importance, and it happily works transitively too — you can diminish someone's achievement, but achievements are never 'dwindled'. If the picture is a supply draining grain by grain, dwindle is the sharper choice.
Is dwindle formal or informal?
Comfortably neutral-to-literary: at home in news reports ('dwindling foreign reserves'), academic prose and fiction alike, and slightly more vivid than decrease or decline. In conversation people usually say 'run low' or 'get smaller'. That makes it a register upgrade in essays — 'attendance dwindled' paints the emptying room, where 'attendance decreased' just files the statistic.