How to Use wither in a Sentence

wither

verb
  • The plants withered and died.
  • The bears live like that for years, milked for bile, withering away.
    Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, 17 July 2023
  • This has a longer inseam for taller folks, and is made in a light wash that won't wither away in the wash.
    Michelle Rostamian, Peoplemag, 18 Aug. 2023
  • The stem tissues shrivel, and parts of the plant begin to wither.
    Neil Sperry, San Antonio Express-News, 2 July 2021
  • However, many of the trees, stripped of their bark by elephants, have withered in the fields.
    Tayari Jones, Travel + Leisure, 26 July 2023
  • Beans withered on the vine; carrots came out of the soil sickly and without crunch.
    Hazlitt, 6 Sep. 2023
  • Likewise, slime mold tubes that find food grow and dead ends wither away.
    Rachael Lallensack, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Dec. 2021
  • The hand that signed the treaty, Scheidemann declared, should wither away.
    Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 27 Dec. 2021
  • And by the ‘80s, when the GM plant and Dennison began to wither away, there wasn’t much left in the core of Framingham.
    Tim Logan, BostonGlobe.com, 30 Nov. 2022
  • Cicadas do trees a service by pruning the weak branches that wither and die from the weight of the eggs that are laid there.
    The Enquirer, 21 June 2021
  • First, its leaves are sun-dried on wooden racks to wither and darken.
    Laura Kiniry, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Feb. 2022
  • Salinas is not the first city where Gannett has let a newsroom wither.
    James Rainey, Anchorage Daily News, 1 Apr. 2023
  • While some herbs can hold up in the microwave, delicate herbs will wither and turn brown.
    Savanna Bous, Better Homes & Gardens, 5 July 2023
  • Marigolds seeds ripen while the plant is flowering; in other species, the flower must wither before the seed grows.
    Los Angeles Times, 28 Oct. 2021
  • In some cases, trees might suck water from their fruit to survive, causing the fruit to wither.
    Alessio Perrone, Scientific American, 31 Aug. 2023
  • The classic old maid was a dowryless creature doomed to wither idly at her parents’ side.
    Wisława Szymborska, The New York Review of Books, 3 Aug. 2021
  • The Wall Street bank is far from alone in its withering assessment of housing costs.
    Sydney Lake, Fortune, 11 Oct. 2023
  • Lower leaves on some plants, like dracaenas and palms, will start to brown and wither as new growth begins.
    Ariel Cheung, Chicago Tribune, 18 May 2022
  • Some sons would wither in the expectations or get lost in the large shadow overhead.
    Arkansas Online, 25 Aug. 2022
  • The guild has faced withering criticism over the last week for failing to condemn the Hamas attacks, which took the lives of more than 1,400 people.
    Gene Maddaus, Variety, 24 Oct. 2023
  • Not all plants wither when faced with harsh conditions.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 2 May 2022
  • Temples were destroyed, and use of the Hawaiian language withered.
    Damien Cave, New York Times, 28 Aug. 2023
  • As the flowers wither, remove them while leaving the green stems and foliage intact.
    Derek Carwood, Better Homes & Gardens, 4 Jan. 2023
  • Most of these have so far failed to make it to the screen and withered in development purgatory.
    Brent Lang, Variety, 5 Apr. 2024
  • Typically, when cut at the stem and arranged in a vase, the delicate flowers wither and droop in a few days.
    Cheri Lucas Rowlands, Longreads, 5 Mar. 2024
  • This particular project may have withered on the vine, but John Denver didn’t.
    John Kelly, Washington Post, 9 Dec. 2023
  • Plants native to Southern California have evolved to grow and thrive in the cooler wet months, bloom their hearts out in the spring and then withdraw and wither in the heat.
    Justin Raystaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 25 May 2022
  • The way to tell if your plants are getting enough water is to watch them and look for signs of drying such as curling leaves, drooping or withering.
    oregonlive, 8 July 2023
  • The way the seasons withered crops or provoked tree sap to flow might manifest in the body as yellow bile surging in the summer and cold, wet phlegm dripping in the winter.
    Meg Leja, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Nov. 2023
  • The way the seasons withered crops or provoked tree sap to flow might manifest in the body as yellow bile surging in the summer, and cold, wet phlegm dripping in the winter.
    Discover Magazine, 7 Nov. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'wither.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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