Gradual decay of life or organic tissue; gradual loss of strength and vitality; consumption, atrophy.

Wasting away through disease or hunger; starvation; an instance of this. Also: languishing, emotional exhaustion; an intense longing or grief (for).

= consumption, n. 2. Obsolete.

A wasting of the body by disease; a consumption or decline. Now only dialect.

Originally: any wasting disorder. Now: severe loss of body weight, spec. (in Medicine) that caused in children by protein-energy malnutrition.

spec. in Old Physiol. and Pathology. The wasting away of the solid parts of the body; consumption.

= marasmus, n.

spec. Bodily decay, wasting away. Obsolete.

Wasting from disease: in quot. with away. (? Obsolete) Hence in dialect a wasting illness, consumption.

Lack of nourishment; a state of being unnourished.

Any disease in which the bodily strength gradually fails; esp. tubercular phthisis, consumption.

The action of digging under, excavating, eroding, etc. Also in figurative contexts.

Premature degeneration of cells or tissue (now usually within the central nervous system), esp. when hereditary or otherwise independent of external…