All 15 Uses of

wane

in

Look Homeward, Angel

He was fifty: he had a tragic consciousness of time—he saw the passionate fulness of his life upon the wane, and he cast about him like a senseless and infuriate beast.†
Chpt 1

The child sat in the big chair by the waning sitting-room fire: she read until the flames had died to coals—then quietly she shovelled ashes on them.†
Chpt 1 *

waning = declining or diminishing

Eugene watched the sun wane and redden on a rocky river, and on the painted rocks of Tennessee gorges: the enchanted river wound into his child's mind forever.†
Chpt 1

And, as the winter waned, the interspersed darkness in Eugene's brain was lifted slowly, days, weeks, months began to emerge in consecutive brightness; his mind came from the confusion of the Fair: life opened practically.†
Chpt 1

He built up a constant exchange of books among his companions, borrowing and lending in an intricate web, from Max Isaacs, from "Nosey" Schmidt, the butcher's son, who had all the rich adventures of the Rover Boys; he ransacked Gant's shelves at home, reading translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey at the same time as Diamond Dick, Buffalo Bill, and the Algers, and for the same reason; then, as the first years waned and the erotic gropings became more intelligible, he turned passionately to all romantic legendry, looking for women in whom blood ran hotly, whose breath was honey, and whose soft touch a spurting train of fire.†
Chpt 1

Later, as the golden sun was waning redly, and there was nothing in the room but the smell of chalk and the heavy buzz of the old October flies, they would prepare to depart.†
Chpt 1

waning = declining or diminishing

Perhaps the cold red light of some remembered winter's afternoon, waning pallidly over a playing-field, with all its mockery of Spring, while lights flared up smokily in houses, the rabble-rout of children dirtily went in to supper, and men came back to the dull but warm imprisonment of home, oil lamps (which he hated), and bedtime, clotted in him a hatred of the place which remained even when the sensations that caused it were forgotten.†
Chpt 2

Louise gave music lessons and enjoyed her waning youth with handsome young men.†
Chpt 2

He could not view with amusement and detachment the death of the senses, the waning of desire, the waxing of physical impotence.†
Chpt 2

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon lover.†
Chpt 2

All through that waning summer, Eugene shuttled frantically from the school to Dixieland, unable, in the delirium of promised glory, to curb his prancing limbs.†
Chpt 2

All through the waning summer he walked with Irene Mallard.†
Chpt 3

waning = declining or diminishing

Thus, as the summer waned, over the slow horror of Gant's death was waged this ugly warfare of greed and hatred.†
Chpt 3

Definition:

a gradual decline (in size or strength or power or number) -- especially the part of the moon that is visible