wear thin en · VERB
Pronunciation
- (Australia) audio
Meanings
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(idiomatic, informal) To lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse.
Your jocose wisecracks have already worn thin.
Continuing his recent stern rhetoric, Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg told reporters in Stockholm that many have worked hard to help Latvia deal with its severe economic recession but that patience is wearing thin.
2009 October 7, Joel Sherwood, “Pressure on Latvia Builds”, in The Wall Street Journal:Women and gay people, for example, can start to live more freely with the breakdown of patriarchal and heterosexist institutions, while workers and people of color are able to challenge the economics of poverty and the ideology of racism as the rationales behind those notions continue to wear ever thinner.
1982 February 6, Lester Strong, “A World Cast Adrift”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 28, page 14:[T]he ‘fun’ factor may be in part attributable the novelty of the feedback mechanism, and the sense of fun might wear thin after longer exposure to the feedback method.
2017, Di Zou, James Lambert, “Feedback methods for student voice in the digital age”, in British Journal of Educational Technology, volume 48, number 5, page 1090:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| wearing thin | Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part | lexicographic | |
| worn thin | Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part | lexicographic | |
| wears thin | Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres | lexicographic | |
| wore thin | Tense=Past | lexicographic |
Translations (13)
es agotarse (to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse) · pl tracić na znaczeniu (to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse) · ru износи́ться (to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse) · ru протира́ться (to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse) · ru исся́кнуть (to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse) · ru истощи́ться (to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse) · ru иссяка́ть (to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse) · fi kulua (to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse) · ru протере́ться (to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse) · pt gastar (to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse) · ru изна́шиваться (to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse) · pt desgastar (to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse) · ru истоща́ться (to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse)