vanish

Etymology

Aphetic for obsolete evanish, from Middle English vanyshen, evaneschen, from Old French esvanir, esvaniss- (modern French évanouir), from Vulgar Latin *exvanire (“to vanish, disappear, to fade out”), from Latin evanescere, from vanus (“empty”). Doublet of evanesce.

Pronunciation

• enPR: văn'ĭsh, IPA^(key): /ˈvænɪʃ/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ænɪʃ
• Hyphenation: van‧ish

Verb

vanish (third-person singular simple present vanishes, present participle vanishing, simple past and past participle vanished)

1. To become invisible or to move out of view unnoticed.
   • 1843 December 19, Charles Dickens, “Stave Three. The Second of the Three Spirits.”, in A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, pages 79–80:

     Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly.

   • 1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Avery Hopwood, chapter I, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 01:

     The Bat—they called him the Bat. Like a bat he chose the night hours for his work of rapine; like a bat he struck and vanished, pouncingly, noiselessly; like a bat he never showed himself to the face of the day.

   • 1982, Ashford & Simpson (lyrics and music), “Love It Away”, in Street Opera:

     I realize sometimes / In a web of passion we all get caught / But understand / All the hurt and all the pain / It's gonna vanish just like the rain

2. (mathematics) To become equal to zero.

   The function ${\displaystyle f}$ such as ${\displaystyle f(x)=x^{2}}$ vanishes at ${\displaystyle x=0}$.

3. (transitive) To disappear; to kidnap.
   • 2011, Patrick Meaney, Our Sentence Is Up: Seeing Grant Morrison's the Invisibles, Sequart, →ISBN, page 330:

     And as if to prove it, one of his friends was vanished and was never seen again. The guy got in a taxi one night, and no one ever saw him ever again.

   • 2004, John Varley, The John Varley Reader, Penguin, →ISBN:

     It was whispered that men had been “vanished” by the Line and returned everted. Turned inside out.

Noun

vanish (plural vanishes)

1. (phonetics) The brief terminal part of a vowel or vocal element, differing more or less in quality from the main part.^[1]

   a as in ale ordinarily ends with a vanish of i as in ill.

   o as in old ordinarily ends with a vanish of oo as in foot.

   • 1827, James Rush, The Philosophy of the Human Voice:

     The median stres may also on a protracted quantity , slightly resemble respectively that of the radical and of the vanish , by sudenly enlarging in the course of the prolongation and gradualy diminishing ; and by the reverse

2. A magic trick in which something seems to disappear.

   The French drop is a well-known vanish involving sleight of hand.

References

Anagrams

• shavin'