fade-out
noun
a gradual decrease in the visibility of a scene.
Showing results for fade-out.
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fade-out
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fade out
fade out
Gradually disappear or become inaudible; also, cause to disappear or become inaudible gradually. For example, He let the final chord fade out completely before he played the next movement . The antonym is fade in , “to appear gradually or become audible,” as in The images on the screen faded in until they could be seen clearly . These terms originated in the motion-picture and broadcasting industries, where they apply to images and sounds. [c. 1915]
fade-out
American
[feyd-out]
/ ˈfeɪdˌaʊt /
noun
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fade-outs
plural
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Movies, Television. a gradual decrease in the visibility of a scene.
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Broadcasting, Recording. a gradual decrease in the volume of sound, especially of recorded or broadcast music, dialogue, or the like, usually ending in complete inaudibility.
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a gradual disappearance or reduction.
the fade-out of a brilliant career.
fade-out
British
noun
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films an optical effect in which a shot slowly disappears into darkness
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a gradual reduction in signal strength in a radio or television broadcast
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a gradual and temporary loss of a received radio or television signal due to atmospheric disturbances, magnetic storms, etc
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a slow or gradual disappearance
verb
fade out
Idioms
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Gradually disappear or become inaudible; also, cause to disappear or become inaudible gradually. For example, He let the final chord fade out completely before he played the next movement . The antonym is fade in , “to appear gradually or become audible,” as in The images on the screen faded in until they could be seen clearly . These terms originated in the motion-picture and broadcasting industries, where they apply to images and sounds. [c. 1915]
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Also, fade away . Quietly depart, as in “Florence Scape, Fanny Scape and their mother faded away to Boulogne” (William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair , 1848). [Mid-1800s]
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of fade-out
First recorded in 1915–20; noun use of verb phrase fade out
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
But that also marks a clear transformation in culinary programming from emphasizing the development of proficiency to encouraging consumption, and the fade-out of the shared cultural exploration Food Network once chaperoned.
From Salon ● Jan. 30, 2026
Just to keep things off- balance, every now and then the band adds an extra beat, while a long, gradual fade-out suggests she’s still a little reluctant to move on.
From New York Times ● Sep. 23, 2022
I’m sad to say this might have been an old-fashioned friend fade-out.
From Slate ● Jun. 10, 2021
Meantime, Berman, learning Szeles was eager to be the subject of a documentary, connected with the performer and signed on to cover his tour and his life, perhaps through to its inevitable fade-out.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2019
The fade-out scene, the one that had Dad actually wringing out his handkerchief, showed the old woman, shivering in a worn and inadequate hug-me-tight, limping slowly up the hill to the poor house.
From "Cheaper by the Dozen" by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Do you worry that some of the exuberance will fade out?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 11, 2025
Decades of research point to the positive impacts of Head Start on children, including improved cognitive and social-emotional development, though a federal study found that some of these effects fade out over time.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 23, 2025
The music didn’t so much stop for the line as fade out: the leg to Leeds was winnowed away and lost finally in 2021.
From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2024
In that case, you don’t see that fade out in the early years of school.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 26, 2023
Once you have that felony stamp, your hope for employment, for any kind of integration into society, it begins to fade out.
From "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander
And, unlike the fade-outs that punctuate the movie like chapter breaks, they unproductively disrupt the flow.
From New York Times ● May 12, 2022
He also wanted the ballad to swell into a riff and the fade-out to end all fade-outs.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 21, 2018
In addition to the tremendous acting, Assayas’s direction has a novel feel, with clever fade-outs reminiscent of theater, which happen just when some bit of action is about to take place.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 16, 2015
This, as it turns out, is about when fade-outs started losing ground to songs with cold endings—or, yes, closure.
From Slate ● Sep. 14, 2014
There is unquestionably a correlation between sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that.
From Disturbing Sun by Robert S. (Robert Shirley) Richardson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
