fall away
Britishverb
-
(of friendship) to be withdrawn
-
to slope down
-
Also, fall off . Withdraw one's friendship, support, or allegiance. For example, After the divorce, her friends slowly fell away . [Early 1500s]
-
Also, fall off . Gradually decline in size or strength, as in The breeze slowly fell away , or, as Shakespeare put it ( King Lear , 1:2): “Love cools, friendship falls off, Brothers divide.” [Early 1500s]
-
Drift from an established faith, cause, or principles. For example, I fell away from the Catholic Church when I was a teenager . [Early 1500]
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.
"It's a combination of a few things, but certainly there is some residual trauma about the two seasons where we felt on track for the title and suddenly fell away," she added.
From BBC
They had seen so much, he thought; and now everything else had fallen away.
From Literature
"There's progress today on certain things. I don't want to be cryptic, but I would hate to say something was certain and it fell away."
From BBC
Then suddenly—woompf—they burst out of the fire and the ground fell away, and Akira went flying off her horse.
From Literature
A quarter of her garden in Thorpeness, Suffolk, has already fallen away, and she has been warned the entire building may soon have to be knocked down.
From BBC
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.
