vanishingly
3
8.3
- adverb
- /ˈvænɪʃɪŋli/
:
casi
- The chances of this occurring in the real world are vanishingly small.
- vanishingly small
- vanishingly rare
- vanishingly low
I think Nick did a particularly phenomenal job in this episode accommodating me because I know vanishingly little physics.
- I think Nick did a particularly phenomenal job in this episode accommodating me because I know vanishingly little physics.
- I mean, there's, it's so vanishingly small, it can't conceivably give the information of even quite simple things we look at.
Examples
-
The chance that he would win the lottery is vanishingly small.
-
Rates of serious adverse events following vaccination, such as Guillain-Barr syndrome, are vanishingly low (no higher than 1 in 1,000,000).
Academic text (2011) -
Indeed, it seems vanishingly unlikely that that would be the case.
-
I'm just glad this kind of thing is a vanishingly rare event in my life.
Blog text (8) -
As noted above, local politics and laws are determined by a vanishingly small percentage of the population.
Blog text (2) -
Fortunately, in UK clinical practice, such things are vanishingly rare.
Academic text (2012) -
Indeed, unemployment among professionals with graduate degrees remains almost vanishingly low.
Academic text (2012) -
The chance that an NEO will be discovered less than a few years before impact is vanishingly small.
Academic text (1992) -
But when you have sort of vanishingly small chances, then the fear doesn't make any sense.
-
The odds of signing a comprehensive treaty in December are vanishingly small.
Academic text (2009)
Synonyms
4
8.6
By a very small amount that is almost zero
1
5.6
In a way that is so small it does not matter
In a way that becomes less and less until almost nothing
In a way people do not notice
How Small
Surface Forms
Morphology
vanishingly = vanishing (transparent) = vanish + ing + ly
The adverb is formed from the adjective 'vanishing' with the productive suffix '-ly', and the meaning ('to an extremely small degree') is directly inferable from 'vanish'.
Etymology
Vanishingly comes from vanish, which means 'to disappear', and the ending -ly turns it into a word that describes how something happens. A helpful image is something that 'vanishes into thin air', so vanishingly means 'in a way that is almost gone or almost not there', as when a chance or a difference is very, very small.