withering

1. 1
   adjective

   Scornful in a way that humiliates, tending to make the person on the receiving end feel small.

   The senator faced withering criticism from both parties after the leaked emails appeared.

   It was the most withering review she had ever written, dismissing the play in three sentences.

   Similarscathing, blistering, scornful, contemptuous, caustic

   Note

   Scorn that shrivels its target is the picture, and it pairs with words for looking and speaking: a withering look, withering remarks, withering questions, withering laughter. It compares freely, too. Lord Dunsany's The Gods of Pegāna (1905) declares that most withering is the laughter of Māna-Yood-Sushāī, aimed at those who play with Worlds and Suns.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of wither.

   Without investment, the town's once-busy port has been withering for decades.

   Regular watering will keep the seedlings from withering during the dry spell.

   Note

   The verb behind it works both ways, and so does the participle: leaves are withering in the heat, or the heat is withering the leaves. It also covers losing power, as a port withers for want of investment, and being overcome by emotion. As a gerund it follows prepositions, as in kept the seedlings from withering.

3. 3
   adjective

   Likely to destroy, devastate, or overwhelm completely.

   The patrol was pinned down by withering fire from the ridge for most of the afternoon.

   The champion set a withering pace in the final laps that left the rest of the field far behind.

   Similardevastating, punishing, blistering, overwhelming

   Note

   Gunfire is the natural home of this meaning. Withering fire and a withering barrage describe shooting that cuts down whatever stands in the open, as when a withering fire opens from behind a palisade in Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Return of Tarzan (1913). The picture comes from the verb wither, plants shriveling under heat, turned on troops caught without cover.

4. 4
   adjective

   Shrinking or declining rapidly.

   The candidate's withering support in the polls forced her out of the race by spring.

   Rising costs and a withering customer base pushed the family business into bankruptcy.

   Similardwindling, shrinking, waning, diminishing

   Note

   The direction reverses here: withering fire does the damage, but a withering fortune is the thing wasting away. In this use the adjective stays close to the verb, and Lydia Sigourney's Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse (1815) sets the withering tree beside the rose-bud dying on its stalk as emblems of a fate that fades.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The process of drying up, shrinking, or losing strength.

   Drought caused a steady withering of crops across the region.

   Historians trace the withering of the town's industries to the closing of the railroad.

   Similardecline, decay, wilting, atrophy

   Oppositegrowth

   Note

   The noun takes of after it, as in the withering of a town's industries, and it can also be counted. An Exposition Upon the Epistle of Jude, by William Jenkyn and James Sherman (1839), warns that spiritual witherings and decayings are opposite to the word of God: the plural turns one slow process into a series of separate lapses.

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