Word.ws English Dictionary

ebb

/ɛb/

ebb noun: the receding movement of the tide.

Noun

ebb (plural ebbs)

  1. The receding movement of the tide.
    • The boats will go out on the ebb.
    • Thou shoreless flood which in thy ebb and flow / Claspest the limits of morality!1824, Mary Shelley, Time
  2. A gradual decline.
    • Thus all the treasure of our flowing years, / Our ebb of life for ever takes away.1684, Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon, Essay on Translated Verse
    • This reflection thawed my congealing blood, and again the tide of life and love flowed impetuously onward, again to ebb as my busy thoughts changed.1826, [Mary Shelley], The Last Man. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC
  3. (especially) A low state; a state of depression.
    • Painting was then at its lowest ebb.1695, C[harles] A[lphonse] du Fresnoy, translated by John Dryden, De Arte Graphica. The Art of Painting, […], London: […] J[ohn] Heptinstall for W. Rogers, […], →OCLC
    • A "lowest ebb" implies something singular and finite, but for many of us, born in the Depression and raised by parents distrustful of fortune, an "ebb" might easily have lasted for years.2002, Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker, number 22 & 29 April
  4. A European bunting, the corn bunting (Emberiza calandra, syns. Emberiza miliaria, Milaria calandra).

Adjective

ebb (comparative ebber, superlative ebbest)

  1. low, shallow
    • All the sea lying betweene, is verie ebbe, full of shallowes and shelves1601, C[aius] Plinius Secundus [i.e., Pliny the Elder], “(please specify |book=I to XXXVII)”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Historie of the World. Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C....

Verb

ebb (third-person singular simple present ebbs, present participle ebbing, simple past and past participle ebbed)

  1. (intransitive) to flow back or recede
    • The tides ebbed at noon.
    Synonyms:
    go out, go down, ooze, reflux, wane
  2. (intransitive) to fall away or decline
    • The dying man's strength ebbed away.
  3. (intransitive) to fish with stakes and nets that serve to prevent the fish from getting back into the sea with the ebb
  4. (transitive) To cause to flow back.
    • Parts of this town do not want a big influx of gay people and are trying to ebb it.1977 August 20, Robin Nicholson, quotee, “7 Arrested in Undercover Raid on P'town Bar”, in Gay Community News, volume 5, number 7, page 1

ebb meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

ebb in Hindi

ईबीबी

ebb in Tamil

ebb
வற்றம் vaṟṟam

ebb in Marathi

ईबीबी

ebb in Urdu

ebb
اتار utār
More languagesFewer languages
ebb in Bengali
ভাটা, কোনো কিছুর হ্রাস, অবনতি
ebb in Telugu
ఎబ్బ్
ebb in Malayalam
വെള്ളമിറങ്ങൽ, ക്ഷയം, വേലിയിറക്കം, അധഃപതനം
ebb in Punjabi
لہنا lahaṇā
ebb in Gujarati
ઇબીબી, ઈબીબી
ebb in Nepali
इबीबी, टु इब्
ebb in Persian
جزر jazr

Examples of ebb in a sentence

  • Men come from distant parts to admire the tides of Solway, which race in at flood and retreat at ebb with a greater speed than a horse can follow.1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide:
  • Industrialism hasn’t been an abiding set of activities in any particular place but rather a dynamic cycle, of takeoff, peak, and ebb.2012, James Howard Kunstler, Too Much Magic, page 74:
  • The 1987 book British Piers was written at a time when Britain's seaside resorts were perhaps at their lowest ebb, with a groundswell of support for rejuvenation and conservation just beginning.2020 July 29, Dr Joseph Brennan, “Railways that reach out over the waves”, in Rail, page 51:

All 26 example sentences with ebb

Synonyms of ebb

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of ebb

Forms of ebb

Noun
pluralebbs
alternative formebbe
Adjective
comparativeebber
superlativeebbest
Verb
third-person singular presentebbs
present participleebbing
past participleebbed
pastebbed

Plural of ebb: ebbs

Origin of ebb

From Middle English ebbe, from Old English ebba (“ebb, tide”), from Proto-West Germanic *abbjā, from Proto-Germanic *abjô, *abjǭ, from Proto-Germanic *ab (“off, away”), from Proto-Indo-European *apó. See also West Frisian ebbe, Dutch eb, German Ebbe, Danish ebbe, Old Norse efja (“countercurrent”), Old English af. More at of, off.

From Middle English ebben, from Old English ebbian, from Proto-West Germanic *abbjōn (“to ebb”).

Words formed from ebb

Phrases with ebb

Words that rhyme with ebb

5 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ebb

What does ebb mean?
Ebb means the receding movement of the tide.
What is ebb in Hindi?
Ebb in Hindi is ईबीबी. See Ebb meaning in Hindi.
How do you use ebb in a sentence?
Men come from distant parts to admire the tides of Solway, which race in at flood and retreat at ebb with a greater speed than a horse can follow.
What part of speech is ebb?
Ebb can be a noun, an adjective or a verb.
How do you pronounce ebb?
Ebb is pronounced /ɛb/.
What is the plural of ebb?
The plural of ebb is ebbs.

Words near ebb in the dictionary

  1. eBayed
  2. eBayer
  3. eBayers
  4. eBaying
  5. eBays
  6. ebb
  7. ebb and flow
  8. ebb tide
  9. ebb tides
  10. Ebbage
  11. ebbe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ebb (page history and authors); ebb (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); வற்றம் (Tamil) (page history and authors); ebb (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); اتار (Urdu) (page history and authors); Ebb (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ebb (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ebb (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); لہنا (Punjabi) (page history and authors); ebb (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ebb (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-ebb.ogg.

Cite this entry: “ebb.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ebb. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.