VANISHING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does vanishing mean? 

• VANISHING (noun)
  The noun VANISHING has 2 senses:

1. a sudden or mysterious disappearance

2. a sudden disappearance from sight

  Familiarity information: VANISHING used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• VANISHING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A sudden or mysterious disappearance

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Hypernyms ("vanishing" is a kind of...):

disappearance (the event of passing out of sight)

Derivation:

vanish (get lost, as without warning or explanation)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A sudden disappearance from sight

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("vanishing" is a kind of...):

disappearance; disappearing (the act of leaving secretly or without explanation)

Derivation:

vanish (become invisible or unnoticeable)

 Context examples 

Point mutations in the gene are linked to leukoencephalopathy with vanishing white matter.

(EIF2B1 wt Allele, NCI Thesaurus)

Mutations in the gene are linked to both leukoencephalopathy with vanishing white matter and ovarioleukodystrophy.

(EIF2B2 wt Allele, NCI Thesaurus)

I traced the white road winding round the base of one mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between two; how I longed to follow it farther!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Genetic mutations in the allele are linked to Cree leukoencephalopathy, leukoencephalopathy with vanishing white matter and ovarioleukodystrophy.

(EIF2B5 wt Allele, NCI Thesaurus)

She had snarled as she sprang away, baring her white fangs to their roots, all her wistfulness vanishing, being replaced by a carnivorous malignity that made him shudder.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

I thought of the assistant’s fondness for photography, and his trick of vanishing into the cellar.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I bear no love for you or for your race, and there is nought that I wish at your hands until the day when I see the last sail which bears you back to your island vanishing away against the western sky.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Founded by Erik the Red around 985AD after his exile from Iceland (or so the Sagas tell us), Norse communities in Greenland thrived for centuries – even gaining a bishop – before vanishing in the 1400s, leaving only ruins.

(Over-hunting walruses contributed to the collapse of Norse Greenland, University of Cambridge)

She stood a minute looking at the party vanishing above, and as Demi's short plaid legs toiled up the last stair, a sudden sense of loneliness came over her so strongly that she looked about her with dim eyes, as if to find something to lean upon, for even Teddy had deserted her.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Too little, if he could not invent a cause of quarrel which would give him the sympathy of the jury; too much, if he evolved from his own inner consciousness anything so outré as a dying reference to a rat, and the incident of the vanishing cloth.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)