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Dwindle vs Windle - What's the difference?

dwindle | windle |

As a verb dwindle

is to decrease, shrink, diminish, reduce in size.

As a noun windle is

the redwing.

dwindle

English

Verb

(dwindl)
  • To decrease, shrink, diminish, reduce in size.
  • * 1802 , , translated by T. Paynell,
    • [E]very thing that was improving gradually degenerates and dwindles away to nothing,
  • (figuratively) To fall away in quality; degenerate, sink.
    • The flattery of his friends began to dwindle into simple approbation.'' (''Goldsmith , Vicar, III)
  • * Jonathan Swift
    • Religious societies, though begun with excellent intentions, are said to have dwindled into factious clubs.
  • * 1919 ,
    • The larger the empire, the more dwindles the mind of the citizen.
  • * '>citation
  • To lessen; to bring low.
  • * Thomson
    • Our drooping days are dwindled down to naught.
  • To break; to disperse.
    • (Clarendon)

    References

    windle

    English

    Etymology 1

    Perhaps from wind.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (UK, dialect) The redwing.
  • * '>citation

    • Etymology 2

    (etyl), from (etyl) .

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • An old English measure of corn, half a bushel.
  • * 1882 , James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England , Volume 4, p. 208.
    • In the Derby household book of 1561, wheat, malt, and oats are sold by the quarter and the windle , in which the quarter clearly contained sixteen windles, and must have been a wholly different measure from that which we are familiar.
  • Dog-tail grass, Plantago lanceolata .
  • Bent grass.