Swindan

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Archaic sense meaning to gradually weaken and pine away from grief or sickness ; to fade out of sight and cease to exist
2. Old English verb for wasting away slowly through illness or sorrow ; an older term for passing out of view and disappearing completely
3. To decline steadily in strength or spirit until nothing is left ; to slip away and be lost from sight entirely

Etymology: Old English "swindan" meant "to languish, pine away, waste away slowly," and it is a close relative of the modern verb "swindle." The link runs through a shared sense of gradual loss: the Old English verb described a body or a fortune dwindling until nothing was left. Its Germanic roots point to a form connected with "swinan," meaning to dwindle or fade, though the exact ancestry is debated. In the medieval period the verb faded from common use and was largely replaced by other words for decline. The modern "swindle," meaning to cheat someone out of money, appears much later, in the 1770s, and it was formed from the German "Schwindler," a term for a fraudster that also carried the idea of giddiness or dizziness. The two words are related only distantly, and English speakers in the 1700s may have treated the German noun as the immediate source.