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wither
in a sentence

show 189 more with this conextual meaning
  • He opened his pouch and drew out some withered leaves.   (source)
    withered = shriveled (wilted, dried up)
  • In the stained-glass window, the lovely rose changed before our eyes into a ghostly specter of my daughter's misshapen and withered arm.   (source)
    withered = shriveled (shrunken)
  • The long copper frame was withered like an old tree and one hand lay limp on the dirt floor.   (source)
    withered = shriveled (wrinkled)
  • He could see Meo's garden patch, weedy but still with the mark of Meo's hand upon it, withering in the searing heat.   (source)
    withering = shriveling (wrinkling from lack of water)
  • Her right arm had been horribly burned and she grew up with its skin withered and purple.   (source)
    withered = shriveled (wrinkled)
  • Bobbie planted rose-bushes in her garden, but all the little new leaves of the rose-bushes shrivelled and withered, perhaps because she moved them from the other part of the garden in May, which is not at all the right time of the year for moving roses.   (source)
    withered = shriveled (wrinkled and shrunk -- usually from lack of water)
  • It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself, While you, heedless of its expansion, bewail the withering of your days.   (source)
    withering = shriveling (becoming smaller)
  • When one speaks, they all begin together, and it's enough to make one wither to hear the way they go on!   (source)
    wither = shrivel or become weak
  • On the ropy cloud, he drew two figures—a thin girl and a withering Jew—and they were walking, arms balanced, toward that dripping sun.†   (source)
  • But when he and his father came over to our side of the room and I saw Kamal's face, really saw it… He had withered—there was simply no other word for it.†   (source)
  • Next he turned his withering gaze upon the forlorn foreman.†   (source)
  • Their bodies, burned by the sun and stained yellow from the raft dye, had withered down to skeletons.†   (source)
  • A glass case nearby held a withered hand on a cushion, a bloodstained pack of cards, and a staring glass eye.†   (source)
  • Virtually no subcutaneous fat remained on the body, and the muscles had withered significantly in the days or weeks prior to death.†   (source)
  • You're not my mother had become my most withering riposte.†   (source)
  • How his withered hands had shaken with palsy afterward.†   (source)
  • If they were very lucky, the man with the withered arm might even raise it—the arm—and wave to them.†   (source)
  • She gives me a withering look.†   (source)
  • Someone else was looking back at me—sunken cheeks with a shaved stubble of hair atop a withered head, ribs sticking out with skin that hung in wrinkled sacks from my arms.†   (source)
  • Her face was old but not withered.†   (source)
  • I wanted to be a professional puppy-player-wither, which at the time seemed eminently reasonable.†   (source)
  • Thomas felt his elation wither, and he stepped back and turned toward the Hole.†   (source)
  • I continued throwing excuses at Justin but started to wither under the heat of his glare.†   (source)
  • A dusty gold crown glinted on his withered head.†   (source)
  • I, too, withered away, the moist-ness sucked out of me, my bones showing plainly through my thin flesh.†   (source)
  • Water spilled along his withered cheeks and down his neck.†   (source)
  • Over the course of twelve years, his flesh and soul withered until he knew he had become transparent.†   (source)
  • "Everybody knows," said Scarlett, with withering scorn.†   (source)
  • But when Will introduces me to Cara, his older sister, she gives me the kind of look that would wither a plant and does not extend her hand for me to shake.†   (source)
  • I raced inside to show my mom, and after a brief moment of blinking at them, she withered into a chair.†   (source)
  • Minerva's smile withered to a pout.†   (source)
  • Older, more withered, but definitely the same evil face.†   (source)
  • She lifted her head to give him a withering glare, but everything spun, dragging her down with it, and she retched again.†   (source)
  • The sea daisies that I laid under the vents are still there, untouched, but they've already withered and died.†   (source)
  • There was still a lot of snow on the ground that spring—old, dead-gray snow—and I was opening another beer for Dan and myself in the kitchen at 80 Front Street, when I happened to look out the kitchen window at the withered rose garden, and there was Mr. Meany!†   (source)
  • Their leaves seemed to be withering, shriveling.†   (source)
  • On their second day, a withered phrenologist gives a presentation to the entire student body.†   (source)
  • Annemarie gave him a withering look.†   (source)
  • Cut off from supplies, with no means to marshal any significant fighting force, eventually this camp—and any others out there like it—will wither and die, like a vine cut off from its roots.†   (source)
  • I know from experience that some things will thrive and others will wither.†   (source)
  • She was no one's aunt particularly, or rather, she was Mr. Tallis's dead second cousin's aunt, but no one questioned her right, after her retirement, to the room on the second floor where, for most of their childhoods, she had been a sweet-natured, bedridden invalid who withered away to an uncomplaining death when Cecilia was ten.†   (source)
  • In the morning he went back to his farm and saw the withering tendrils.†   (source)
  • The real Alyss tilted her head in a certain way and the attacking bouquet wadded up, strangled itself, withered, and died.†   (source)
  • Because a philodendron plant my father had given her had withered and died, despite the fact that she watered it faithfully.†   (source)
  • Her father gave her a withering look.†   (source)
  • She casts a withering look at a blond-haired older boy, one of the troublemakers.†   (source)
  • Blackly he reposes, tender face the color of soot, withered limbs like veins of coal, feet lumps of driftwood hung with shriveled grapes!†   (source)
  • The petunias in her window box, planted Memorial Day weekend, the last time Gogol and Sonia were home together, have withered to shuddering brown stalks that she's been meaning, for weeks, to root from the soil.†   (source)
  • Underneath their painted leather vests, their withered dugs swayed back and forth, shiny with oil and sweat.†   (source)
  • The brown withered leaves of the oak trees hung motionless from the branches.†   (source)
  • Her defenses withered a bit upon encountering the openness in his brown eyes.†   (source)
  • These castles were about one foot high and were decorated with shells, withered flowers, and interesting stones.†   (source)
  • She'd withered from 140 pounds to about 100.†   (source)
  • Only the crest of the Giant's face was still visible, and it was white bone, like limestone protruding from a discouraged, withering mountain.†   (source)
  • Even the bees seem drunk in the heat, circling slowly, colliding, hitting up against the withering flowers before thudding to the ground, then starting dazedly back into the air.†   (source)
  • HERMIONE looks witheringly at RON: RON takes the hit.†   (source)
  • Flowers withered, insects shrivelled and fish died in their tanks.†   (source)
  • A section withered and became a scar on the part of your soul that survived.†   (source)
  • She gave me one of her withering looks.†   (source)
  • The monsters on the opposite shore-where he had stood only moments beforefell beneath a withering hail of arrows from crevasses that pockmarked the cliff.†   (source)
  • I can't drag a husband and sons into a life where their beauty will blossom and wither in darkness.†   (source)
  • It was in a sorry state, withered and puckered.†   (source)
  • …him as he unconsciously pulls up and back, the thornblade drawing blood which drips on her flesh, her pale flesh, reflective now, flesh as cold as dead metal, his hips still moving even as he watches through passion-dimmed eyes as Moneta's lips wither and curl back, revealing rows of steel blades where teeth had been, metal blades slash at his buttocks where fingers had gripped, legs like powerful steel bands imprison his pumping hips, her eyes… …in thelast seconds before orgasm Kassad…†   (source)
  • These paths, trodden down for centuries by warring tribesmen, were the very routes taken by the defeated Taliban and al Qaeda after the withering U.S. bombardment had all but annihilated them in 2001.†   (source)
  • Like every nerve in my body was withering in, pulling away from my fingers and toes.†   (source)
  • In Oedipus Rex Sophocles has Thebes hit by various plagues—withered crops, stillborn children, the works—but here as in general use, plague carries with it the implication of bubonic.†   (source)
  • His first earned purchase made him glow, never mind the turnips were withered dry.†   (source)
  • Some cry for milk as a mama presses a needle through a withered vein on her arm.†   (source)
  • But she raised her right hand, as thousands of other arms lifted into the air around her, and she chanted, with thousands of other voices, "If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise."†   (source)
  • The Patriarch of Antioch appeared briefly in the sky—and waved his withered hand.†   (source)
  • Within the full cycle of the moon, we will wither and die.†   (source)
  • Jace said witheringly.†   (source)
  • The cold January wind blew in my face or drove me on, rustling the paper in which the dead were wrapped, lifting it to expose naked, withered shins, sunken bellies, faces with teeth bared and eyes staring into nothing.†   (source)
  • To respect someone's civil liberties to the point of allowing them to wither away on the street, or to intercede in the interest of their own welfare?†   (source)
  • Amy was clever, withering, sarcastic.†   (source)
  • She was still young, a woman who had made a mark on life with her elegance and social drive, but who was now slowly withering in the aroma of camphor that rose from her widow's crepe.†   (source)
  • Jamis has been called by Him, by Shai-hulud, who has ordained the phases for the moons that daily wane and—in the end—appear as bent and withered twigs.†   (source)
  • He threw me a withering look.†   (source)
  • Apparently worried he would be too timid, he dealt a withering blow with his knee to Marley's solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him.†   (source)
  • Since then he had withered rapidly.†   (source)
  • It occurred to me that my vision of the fig tree and all the fat figs that withered and fell to earth might well have arisen from the profound void of an empty stomach.†   (source)
  • …bond he and his friends used to say was like that of brothers, but was in some ways stronger than that of brothers, or at least than his bond with his own brother, his kid brother, who had passed last spring from cancer of the throat that had withered him to the weight of a young girl, and who had not spoken to the old man for years, and when the old man had gone to see him in the hospital could no longer speak, could only look, and in his eyes was exhaustion but not so much fear,…†   (source)
  • Flowers that grow where old ones have withered serve to remind us that death will one day come to us all.†   (source)
  • He acquired a withered white prostitute, a diamond ring on his little finger and a Harris tweed coat with raglan sleeves.†   (source)
  • Jean Louise gave her uncle a look which withered him not at all and marched into the church with as much dignity as she could muster.†   (source)
  • On the window sill stood a potted plant with brown, withered leaves.†   (source)
  • I could feel my soul begin to wither.†   (source)
  • Two swings side by side, withered leaves covering the ground.†   (source)
  • It was an ancient woman, withered and bent, and Buttercup thought of all the faces that had gone by in her lifetime, but this one she could not remember.†   (source)
  • Tiurin looked at him witheringly.†   (source)
  • She'd withered up, wilted, gotten tangled in her own best intentions.†   (source)
  • In the end, Lusaka confirmed the separation of the ANC and the party and the argument eventually withered away.†   (source)
  • I le felt Very lonely and desolate as his thoughts turned far away—to the foolish, lovable bug; to the comforting assurance of Tuck, standing next to him; to the erratic, excitable PIN N E: to little Alec, who, he hoped, would someday reach the ground; to Rhyme and Reason, without whom Wisdom withered; and to the many, many others he would renumber always.†   (source)
  • Instead, I find an Appalachian apple doll, withered and spotty, with dewlaps and bags and long floppy ears.†   (source)
  • Standing in the middle of the wagon, in the pale light from the windows, she looked like a withered tree in a cornfield.†   (source)
  • The very monotony I had lately disdained cried out to me: I am essential without me you will wither, like this summer folding up into fall' freeze hard, water in winter awaiting the first breath of spring' uproot, grass in a wind blown into tornado' parch, like earth denied rain.†   (source)
  • Sana puts a hand on the man's arm, but the look she gives Keenan could wither stone.†   (source)
  • And dangling from the stays he's got half a dozen withered objects, tied by the hair like scalps.†   (source)
  • Now the Mount Elgon herd has withered to one extended family of about seventy elephants.†   (source)
  • That withering look, which Luma would perfect over the years, had the stinging effect of a riding crop.†   (source)
  • " 'They will wither, master,' said Rabscuttle, 'and I am withered now.'†   (source)
  • He leveled Liam with a withering stare.†   (source)
  • He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength and that they must make their way back into the common enterprise of man for without they do so it cannot go forward and they themselves will wither in bitterness.†   (source)
  • The firefighters were already engulfed in a wave of withering heat, and the flames were reaching out toward them.†   (source)
  • In my experience, these creatures weren't the sleazeballs who'd act sexually toward prisoners; in fact, they would never fraternize with lower life-forms like us, and they reserved their most withering scorn for their colleagues who treated us humanely.†   (source)
  • He could have ruined his own self in time but she was tired of waiting for him to wither up.†   (source)
  • He felt the men's hands on him, and he had a strange wilting feeling, as if he was a plant suddenly withering away in the sun.†   (source)
  • This gatemouth is out to expose him in some withering way.†   (source)
  • After two years of constantly lying curled up in a fetal position, Simeesh's legs had withered and become permanently bent: She couldn't move them, let alone straighten them, and she was too emaciated and weak to operate on.†   (source)
  • As his convoy exfiltrated the area with detainees, his element came under withering enemy fire.†   (source)
  • The housekeeper bids us wait for a moment in a large, poorly lit parlor filled with dusty books and withering ferns.†   (source)
  • The most beautiful women, the most learned men, even Mohammed, who heard Allah's own voice, all did wither and die.†   (source)
  • But even with the hundreds of flowers, I was aware of the small deaths brought by each morning, as one by one, the roses withered.†   (source)
  • Expectations, evaluations, internal evasions
    Fly out of me like puddles of blood from a wound
    A fetus from the womb of a corpse in a tomb
    Withered and strewn like red sheets on the bed
    Of an immaculate room.
    I can't breathe,
    I can't win,
    From this indelible position I'm in
    It controls the only piece of my unfortunate soul
    Left to fend for itself in this hollowed-out hole
    That I dug from within, like a prisoner in
    An unlocked cell sitting in the deepest pits of…†   (source)
  • His offer was met by withering gunfire.†   (source)
  • Char's answer: "My tongue may wither from disuse here, but at least I shan't lose words entirely while I still can write to you."†   (source)
  • There are parts that have withered.†   (source)
  • "I told Magwich to burn it," he said, giving the Steward a withering glare, "but it seems he's unable to do even the simplest of tasks.†   (source)
  • Something dead is happening, like the weeds that are left to bleach and wither in the sun.†   (source)
  • Torn apart by the wish to take no action-to starve, to wither in thought on the one hand; and driven to kill on the other-I stood in an empty, desolate street and heard the sound of a child crying.†   (source)
  • My flesh is withered, Father, but not my spirit!†   (source)
  • 'He didn't say that,' Corporal Whitcomb corrected with withering precision.†   (source)
  • Here were greens bright as spring, dry as withered grass, earthy as leaves at the end of summer, vibrant as moss after a rain, dull as that moment before the yellows and reds of fall begin to set in.†   (source)
  • When I asked one of the girls who was studying Greek to read me a line or two, she gave me a withering look.†   (source)
  • Deborah stepped forward and took Ultima's withered hand.†   (source)
  • But all my confident words are withering on my lips.†   (source)
  • Hema peered around Sister Mary Joseph Praise's swollen belly to fix Nurse Asqual with a withering look.†   (source)
  • "Hardly a special talent," ter Borcht said witheringly.†   (source)
  • And here Tanis thundered to Palus, "Come, my love, throw yourself into my arm of iron, and I will strike the withering beasts from the air with my other, a fist of stone."†   (source)
  • She assumed that every person there, except for Jake, believed her mother was sleeping with a withered and decaying old white man, and doing so to get his money.†   (source)
  • I loved him and give him the poison and he withered away like a frost-bit apple.†   (source)
  • They were low, dusty, and blunted, with scrubby vegetation and an occasional withered yucca tree crusted in snow.†   (source)
  • Unless they caught the tide exactly right, the men in the boats could have been stranded on mudflats a hundred yards or more from dry ground and forced to struggle through knee-deep muck while under withering fire.†   (source)
  • The summers withered the cotton and corn and the tornado season lasted ten months, making splinters out of their barns, twisting the tin off their roofs, yanking their tombstones out of the ground.†   (source)
  • "Somehow," said Marie, giving her brother a withering look, "I have an idea you probably said something like that to David when he told you he was going to Paris."†   (source)
  • I Ier old, much-mended bodice had given way with the tugging, exposing one withered pap, purple from bruising.†   (source)
  • She gave Annie a withering look.†   (source)
  • Celia examines the withered contents of her refrigerator: three carrots, half a green pepper, a handful of spongy potatoes.†   (source)
  • Joe reeled backward from the burning woman, from the sight that scorched his heart, from the hideous stench that withered him, from an insoluble mystery that left him empty of hope.†   (source)
  • The grass, the withering leaves were full of whispering, but the campground was hushed, muffled by their presence, as if blighted.†   (source)
  • I guess my daddy is like the green grass only he was cut down before he could wither and fade.†   (source)
  • Without the water the crops would wither in the summer heat.†   (source)
  • The roaring pillar of flame began to die and wither to quiet licks of flame among the spent logs.†   (source)
  • Archie stiffened, shot a look at Carter, a withering look that said, tell them to cut the crap.†   (source)
  • Someone small with withered legs.†   (source)
  • It was not a matter of texture or wrinkles, it was the same face with the same muscles, but saturated by the withering look of resignation to a pain accepted as hopeless.†   (source)
  • GEORGE (Withering) Your sympathy disarms me …. your …. your compassion makes me weep!†   (source)
  • Without man, the wheat might grow wild, it might flourish, but then it would wither and die.†   (source)
  • The plantation system has long gone; the society it fostered has withered away, even in cities that once displayed its graces, such as Charleston, South Carolina.†   (source)
  • You have seen the young shoot swelling Even as the parent stalk begins to wither.†   (source)
  • The General returned to his seat, smiling, folded his hands beneath his chin, and immobilized me with the withering crossfire of his eyes again.†   (source)
  • However, after 1846, no one at the mission saw him again until 1879 when he appeared at the gates one morning, withered, frail, and extremely ill.†   (source)
  • For that one blistering summer, the ground moisture was just right, planting early allowed pollination before heat withered the tops, and the lack of rain spared the standing corn from floods.†   (source)
  • The back is a gaudy parade float of lilies and carnations and roses in varying states of bloom and wither.†   (source)
  • All his idealism would have withered in the face of the baby's raw cry, but he didn't know….†   (source)
  • But under withering artillery fire the men begin to fall back.†   (source)
  • They're simple, don't wither up on you if you look cross-eyed.†   (source)
  • Loses not the arm but the use of it; it remains withered within his pinned sleeve for the rest of his days.†   (source)
  • By fall, when we had returned to E. A. Poe High and football season was well underway, with Misty high-stepping her way through each half-time performance, the canna lilies stood like a bed of corn stalks, brown and withered.†   (source)
  • Under his withering look, her face went from hope to savage disappointment faster than Amanda could take a breath.†   (source)
  • His eyes never left mine even as I tried to wither away from his touch.†   (source)
  • He just tells you he's a peasant and that he's thirty-three years old and that he's got a withered arm.†   (source)
  • I found a box of semifresh saltines, a few withered apples, a quart of chocolate milk and a bag of taco chips.†   (source)
  • Put some blood into your cheeks," Brave Orchid said, and pinched her sister's withered face.†   (source)
  • Nothing can describe the withering horror of this.†   (source)
  • It was a mask, withered and pitiable.†   (source)
  • ANNIE [WITHERING]: Cleaner.†   (source)
  • The new American finds his challenge and his love in traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the townlets wither a time and die.†   (source)
  • By midday they were traversing a rocky barren terrain, its only trees the drooping mugga-woods, its only flowers the everlasting daisies: the flowers that never die; that live on, even after their petals, leaves, stalks, and roots have crumbled and withered away.†   (source)
  • The daily firings produced by the withering economy offered loopholes of opportunity for a young man who kept his eyes open.†   (source)
  • But I had to admit that what Sergeant Zim had taken, and swallowed, was so completely humiliating and withering as to make the worst I had ever heard or overhead from a sergeant sound like a love song.†   (source)
  • Once, Samanas had travelled through Siddhartha's town, ascetics on a pilgrimage, three skinny, withered men, neither old nor young, with dusty and bloody shoulders, almost naked, scorched by the sun, surrounded by loneliness, strangers and enemies to the world, strangers and lank jackals in the realm of humans.†   (source)
  • The zombies marched to a slow, steady drumbeat, and the fire elementals flowed on before them and the grasses withered where they passed.†   (source)
  • Our Petia had withered legs, he was three but he couldn't walk at all, so I carried him around.†   (source)
  • After a few moments Catherine gave up, and relaxed her trumpet between her withered hands into her lap.†   (source)
  • Or maybe it's been nesting on some withered branch?†   (source)
  • She had come to ask for some palm leaves to thatch the new but her husband was building; but I could only point to the blackened tree, its head bitten off and hanging by a few fibres from the withered stump.†   (source)
  • Frequently peeling off his shirt during the hot summer campaign, he harangued audiences in every corner of Texas with his great fund of vituperative epithets and withering sarcasm.†   (source)
  • Big dead trees, like black men with one arm, were standing in the purple stalks of the withered cotton field.†   (source)
  • Off this farm he would wither and die.†   (source)
  • sometimes there will be a withered leg or a blind eye or a crumpled back.   (source)
    withered = shriveled (became weaker)
  • May his beard wither!   (source)
    wither = to shrivel or become weaker
  • on the withered fingers   (source)
    withered = shriveled (wrinkled)
  • Perks sat down heavily in the elbow-chair and looked at them with what Bobbie afterwards described as withering glances of gloomy despair.   (source)
    withering = shriveling or becoming weaker; or humiliating; or intense
  • The moment his fingers touched them they became strangely withered and dried up as with a week's sunshine.   (source)
    withered = shriveled (wrinkled)
  • Jimmy was shocked by how old she'd become: her skin was lined, her mouth withered.†   (source)
  • From the lawn comes a scent of withering lilacs — a singed smell, like sunburned skin.†   (source)
  • "Midnight," Vittoria said, with a withering look.†   (source)
  • It withered and hung useless, so Madam sold her.†   (source)
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