fade away

See also: fadeaway, and fade-away

English

Verb

fade away (third-person singular simple present fades away, present participle fading away, simple past and past participle faded away)

1. To lose strength, become weaker; to wane; to disappear or reduce slowly.

   Coordinate terms: fall away, slip away, tail off, taper off, trail off

   I was angry at first, but my rage faded away over time.

   • 1712 (date written), [Joseph] Addison, Cato, a Tragedy. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […], published 1713, →OCLC, Act I, scene v, page 1:

     The stars shall fade away.

   • 1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 21, in Dracula, New York, N.Y.: Modern Library, →OCLC:

     "I felt my strength fading away, and I was in a half swoon. How long this horrible thing lasted I know not, but it seemed that a long time must have passed before he took his foul, awful, sneering mouth away. I saw it drip with the fresh blood!"

   • 1963, The Beatles (lyrics and music), “I'll Be on My Way”:

     The sun is fading away
     That's the end of the day

Derived terms

• fade-away (noun)
• fadeaway (noun)

 

Translations

to lose strength

• Estonian: haihtuma, vaibuma, hääbuma
• Finnish: heiketä (fi), hiipua (fi)
• French: disparaître (fr), s’effacer (fr), s’éloigner (fr)
• Malayalam: ദുർബ്ബലമാവുക (duṟbbalamāvuka)
• Polish: zanikać (pl), przekwitać (pl)

Noun

fade away

1. (art) A painting technique in which young women's clothes fade into the background.
   • 2009, Alison A. Nieder, Jim Heimann, 100 Ans de Pubs de Mode, page 1879:

     Phillips became known for the "fade away, in which the main figures' clothing is the same color as the background, allowing the elements to partially blend.

   • 2015, David Leopold, The Hirschfeld Century:

     Hirschfeld captured many scenes in line and employed Coles Phillips's "fade away" technique in his painting on the left.

   • 2019, Coles Phillips, Fadeaway: The Remarkable Imagery of Coles Phillips:

     In Phillip's "Fade Away" style, he is literally editing out elements (by making them the same flat color as the background), but those elements are still there.

References

• "Fade-away girl in front of a mirror", 1912. Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston.
• Skirt outline. Life (magazine), January 27, 1910, cover. Wikimedia Commons.