waste away

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waste away (third-person singular simple present wastes away, present participle wasting away, simple past and past participle wasted away)

1. (idiomatic) To lose energy and/or become weak and feeble.

   She watched him waste away from lack of food or exercise.

   • 2020 April, Elizabeth Kolbert, “Why we won't avoid a climate catastrophe”, in National Geographic:

     The perennial Arctic ice cap—the sea ice that persists through winter and summer—is wasting away. Over the past half century it has shrunk by more than a million square miles

• pine away