to wear thin
11
6.2
- phrasal verb
- Informal
:
agotarse
- But these days, Renaldia's understanding is wearing thin.
- patience wears thin
- the joke has worn thin
- the routine wears thin
You've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin and your refusal has cost all of us.
- You've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin and your refusal has cost all of us.
- And so you wear thin the armor of civilization when you teach men to be weak.
- So even my patience has worn thin and it's something I, I knew I wanted to do with my scripted feature.
Examples
-
At this point, my patience is wearing very thin with libertarians and righties.
Blog text (13) -
With all due respect, sir, our president's patience is wearing thin.
-
I love their products, but the attitude is wearing thin.
Blog text (14) -
My patience is wearing thin.
-
I really am tired of teaching because my patience is wearing thin.
Academic text (1994) -
My patience has worn thin.
-
Even tonight, as she works on college essays, my patience wears thin.
Blog text (10) -
Mr. Appleton, the Committee's patience is wearing thin.
-
You know, this buddy-buddy shtick between you two is really starting to wear thin.
-
After weeks of waiting for a response, my patience is wearing thin.
Synonyms
531
1.2
To slowly become less visible, bright, or loud
305
2.8
To make people and things less strong or effective
80
5.8
To become boring or annoying after you hear it many times
72
5.1
To become smaller or less in number over time
69
3.0
To become weaker and then disappear over time
49
2.6
Become less in number, amount, or quality
48
6.4
To become less in size, amount, or strength
19
4.3
To become less in amount or quality
9
4.5
To become smaller or weaker over time until it stops
4
4.2
Become faded or damaged from use
Antonyms
How Effective
Surface Forms
Morphology
The sense arises directly from combining 'wear' (to be gradually reduced by use) with 'thin' (becoming insubstantial), so the metaphor of something being worn down to thinness transparently yields 'become less strong/effective.' This depletion metaphor is cross-linguistically common and follows normal compositional logic, so a B1 learner who knows both words will very likely infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Wear thin is also used for feelings or ideas: when something is repeated so much it loses force, like a cloth rubbed until it wears and goes thin. So, it means 'to become less strong, less effective, or less believable'.