to pine away
4
8.3
- phrasal verb
- /paɪn əˈweɪ/
:
consumirse
- She felt herself pine away with every passing day, consumed by sadness after losing her beloved pet.
- pine away and die
- animals just pine away
- just pine away
Examples
-
And so I pine away by my window every evening; I pine away lost in thought, struggling with strings of unanswered questions.
Fiction book (1998) -
You thought she'd be pining away for you.
-
I just hate to see you pining away.
-
And while we're on the subject of other men, Mama, you need to get yourself a man and stop pining away for Daddy.
-
But he loved himself, not her, so she pined away until just her voice was left.
Fiction book (2002) -
Tell him I'm pale and drawn and pining away.
-
She made all of us nervous as she pined away, waiting for her love's return.
Fiction book (1995) -
His kid brother at High Point Farm is pining away like poor Silky, left behind and lonely.
Fiction book (1997) -
And ah, yes, he has a sweetheart who pines away until she's a mere shadow of herself.
Fiction book (1995) -
You're pining away over that drifter Craig.
Synonyms
32
7.2
To become weak and lose energy because of neglect or sadness
Antonyms
How Weak
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from 'pine' (to yearn intensely) plus 'away' (to fade or diminish): together they convey gradually wasting or weakening because of longing. This compositional pattern is predictable and cross-linguistically common, so a learner who knows both constituents should be able to infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
The verb pine away may come from the image of a thin pine tree slowly losing its needles and looking weak. People used that picture for someone who 'misses' a loved one so much they slowly lose strength, so pine away now means 'to become weak or ill because of deep sadness or missing someone'.