You can picture wither as what a hot afternoon does to a picked leaf. Nothing hits it and nothing breaks it. The water inside simply leaves. The leaf goes soft, curls at the edge, turns brown and thin, and ends up smaller than it started. It is a quiet loss you can watch happen. Every use of the word borrows that picture: something that was full and alive dries down to less, on its own, because whatever fed it stopped coming.
From the word’s history
Wiktionary traces wither to Middle English widren, related to (or perhaps an alteration of) Middle English wederen, to expose to weather, from Old English wederian. Leaving something out in the weather is exactly the slow drying the modern word describes.
依 Wiktionary，wither 來自中古英文 widren，跟中古英文 wederen（把東西暴露在天氣裡，源自古英文 wederian）相關，和 weather 同一條線索。東西擺在外面風吹日曬，久了就乾掉、縮小——這正好是今天 wither 在講的那種慢慢流失。
Wiktionary entry for wither, etymology 1 (packet source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:852319148)
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原始詞典資料9 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Withername
- 1
A surname.
witherverb詞源 1/ˈwɪðə/
- 1
To shrivel, droop or dry up, especially from lack of water.
- The flowers began to wither in the hot sun without enough water.
- She watched as the old tree slowly withered with time.
- 2
To cause to shrivel or dry up.
- There was a man which had his hand withered.
- This is man, old, wrinkled, faded, withered.
- 3
To lose vigour or power; to languish; to waste away; to pass away.
- names that must not wither
- States thrive or wither as moons wax and wane.
- 4
To become helpless due to emotion.
- 5
To make helpless due to emotion.
witheradv詞源 3/ˈwɪðə/
- 1
obsoleteAgainst, in opposition to.
witherverb詞源 4/ˈwɪðə/
- 1
To go against, resist; oppose.
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。