Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Progressively wasting away.
from The Century Dictionary.
- In medicine, suffering from tabes; wasting away; becoming emaciated.
- In botany, wasting or shriveling.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Withering, or wasting away.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
Wasting away , or becomingemaciated .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Latin tābēscēns, tābēscent-, present participle of tābēscere, to waste away, inchoative of tābēre, from tābēs, a wasting away.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
C 1890, from Latin tabescens, present participle of tabescere
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Examples
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At this weak, pale, tabescent moment in the history of American literature, we need a battalion, a brigade, of Zolas to head out into this wild, bizarre, unpredictable, Hog-stomping Baroque country of ours and reclaim its literary property .
A Man Half Full Mailer, Norman 1998
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... as Wolfe makes clear, a writer needs to be big and strong because a real writer is more warrior than artist: “At this weak, pale, tabescent moment in the history of American literature, we need a battalion, a brigade, of Zolas to head out into this wild, bizarre, unpredictable, Hog-stomping Baroque country of ours and reclaim it as literary property.”
Social Fiction 2007
zweidinge commented on the word tabescent
wasting away; becoming emaciated or consumed
May 18, 2009