Wiktionary

vanish

English

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Etymology

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Aphetic for obsolete evanish, from Middle English evanisshen, esvanisshen, from Old French esvanir, esvaniss- (modern French évanouir), from Vulgar Latin *exvanire (“to vanish, disappear, to fade out”), from Latin ēvānēscō, ēvānēscere, from vānus (“empty”). By surface analysis, Latin vān- +‎ -ish (“verb suffix”). Doublet of evanesce.

Displaced native Old English cwincan, whose causative persists as quench (“put out (fire)”).

Pronunciation

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Verb

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vanish (third-person singular simple present vanishes, present participle vanishing, simple past and past participle vanished)

  1. (intransitive) To become invisible or to move out of view unnoticed.
    • 1843 December 19, Charles Dickens, “Stave Three. The Second of the Three Spirits.”, in A Christmas Carol. […], London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, pages 79–80:
      Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly.
    • 1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Avery Hopwood, chapter I, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 01:
      The Bat—they called him the Bat. Like a bat he chose the night hours for his work of rapine; like a bat he struck and vanished, pouncingly, noiselessly; like a bat he never showed himself to the face of the day.
    • 1982, Ashford & Simpson, “Love It Away”, in Street Opera:
      I realize sometimes / In a web of passion we all get caught / But understand / All the hurt and all the pain / It's gonna vanish just like the rain
  2. (mathematics) To become equal to zero.
    The function f such as f(x)=x2 vanishes at x=0.
  3. (transitive) To disappear; to kidnap.
    • 2011, Patrick Meaney, Our Sentence Is Up: Seeing Grant Morrison's the Invisibles, Sequart, →ISBN, page 330:
      And as if to prove it, one of his friends was vanished and was never seen again. The guy got in a taxi one night, and no one ever saw him ever again.
    • 2004, John Varley, The John Varley Reader, Penguin, →ISBN:
      It was whispered that men had been “vanished” by the Line and returned everted. Turned inside out.

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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Noun

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vanish (plural vanishes)

  1. (phonetics) The brief terminal part of a vowel or vocal element, differing more or less in quality from the main part.[1]
    a as in ale ordinarily ends with a vanish of i as in ill.
    o as in old ordinarily ends with a vanish of oo as in foot.
    • 1827, James Rush, The Philosophy of the Human Voice:
      The median stres may also on a protracted quantity , slightly resemble respectively that of the radical and of the vanish , by sudenly enlarging in the course of the prolongation and gradualy diminishing ; and by the reverse
  2. A magic trick in which something seems to disappear.
    The French drop is a well-known vanish involving sleight of hand.
  3. A disappearance; a vanishment.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ “vanish”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

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