Word.ws English Dictionary

petering out

petering out is the present participle and gerund of peter out.

Meaning of peter out

Verb

peter out (third-person singular simple present peters out, present participle petering out, simple past and past participle petered out)

  1. (intransitive) Synonym of peter (“to diminish to nothing, (originally) to refer to a vein of ore”).
    • What started as a great effort ended up petering out to nothing.

Questions about petering out

What is petering out the present participle and gerund of?
Petering out is the present participle and gerund of peter out.

Words near petering out in the dictionary

  1. Peterhof
  2. Peterhouse
  3. Peterhouse College
  4. Peterik
  5. petering
  6. petering out
  7. Peterka
  8. Peterkas
  9. Peterkin
  10. Peterlee
  11. Peterloo

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: petering out (page history and authors); peter out (page history and authors). 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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Cite this entry: “petering out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/petering_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.