wear thin

Questions about wear thin

What does wear thin mean?

wear thin means "deteriorate through use or stress".

What is another word for wear thin?

Close synonyms include wear, wear off, wear out, wear down. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is wear thin a common word?

wear thin is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.