Word.ws English Dictionary

wearing thin

wearing thin is the present participle and gerund of wear thin.

Meaning of wear thin

Verb

wear thin (third-person singular simple present wears thin, present participle wearing thin, simple past wore thin, past participle worn thin)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To lessen or weaken over time, as from overuse.
    • Your jocose wisecracks have already worn thin.

Questions about wearing thin

What is wearing thin the present participle and gerund of?
Wearing thin is the present participle and gerund of wear thin.

Words near wearing thin in the dictionary

  1. wearing sackcloth and ashes
  2. wearing something on one's sleeve
  3. wearing the breeches
  4. wearing the pants
  5. wearing the trousers
  6. wearing thin
  7. wearing through
  8. wearing too many hats
  9. wearing up
  10. wearing yellow stockings
  11. wearingly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wearing thin (page history and authors); wear thin (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: “wearing thin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wearing_thin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.