Verb
wear thin (third-person singular simple present wears thin, present participle wearing thin, simple past wore thin, past participle worn thin)
- (idiomatic) To lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse.
1982 February 6, Lester Strong, “A World Cast Adrift”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 28, page 14: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.
2009 October 7, Joel Sherwood, “Pressure on Latvia Builds”, in The Wall Street Journal: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.
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:[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.
Translations
to lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse
- Finnish: kulua (fi)
- Polish: tracić na znaczeniu
- Portuguese: gastar (pt), desgastar (pt)
- Russian: истоща́ться (ru) impf (istoščátʹsja), истощи́ться (ru) pf (istoščítʹsja) (e.g. patience), иссяка́ть (ru) impf (issjakátʹ), исся́кнуть (ru) pf (issjáknutʹ) (e.g. patience), протира́ться (ru) impf (protirátʹsja), протере́ться (ru) pf (proterétʹsja) (clothes, shoes), изна́шиваться (ru) impf (iznášivatʹsja), износи́ться (ru) pf (iznosítʹsja) (clothes, shoes)
- Spanish: agotarse (es)
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