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/ʃrɪŋk/ Listen

verb

Shrink v. t. (past shrank; past part. shrunk; pres. part. shrinking)

To cause to contract or shrink; as, to shrink finnel by imersing it in boiling water.

To draw back; to withdraw. (Obs.) "The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn."

To shrink on (Mach.), to fix (one piece or part) firmly around (another) by natural contraction in cooling, as a tire on a wheel, or a hoop upon a cannon, which is made slightly smaller than the part it is to fit, and expanded by heat till it can be slipped into place.

Shrink v. i. (past shrank; past part. shrunk; pres. part. shrinking)

To wrinkle, bend, or curl; to shrivel; hence, to contract into a less extent or compass; to gather together; to become compacted. "And on a broken reed he still did stay His feeble steps, which shrunk when hard thereon he lay." "I have not found that water, by mixture of ashes, will shrink or draw into less room." "Against this fire do I shrink up." "And shrink like parchment in consuming fire." "All the boards did shrink."

To withdraw or retire, as from danger; to decline action from fear; to recoil, as in fear, horror, or distress. "What happier natures shrink at with affright, The hard inhabitant contends is right." "They assisted us against the Thebans when you shrank from the task."

To express fear, horror, or pain by contracting the body, or part of it; to shudder; to quake. (R.)

noun

Shrink n.

The act shrinking; shrinkage; contraction; also, recoil; withdrawal. "Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink, That I had less to praise."

A psychiatrist. (Coll.)

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Etymology of 'Shrink'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Shrink" Quotes from Famous Books

... youth and beauty die. So be it, O my God, thou God of truth. Better than beauty and than youth Are saints and angels, a glad company: And Thou, O lord, our Rest and Ease, Are better far than these. Why should we shrink from our full harvest? why Prefer ...

— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... ladies so often fill the place of the boatmen, had I been so pleasantly ferried over the water. At the same time I could not help asking her why she had shown such an objection to going the way which you had gone, along the little by-path. I had observed her shrink from it with a sort of painful uneasiness. She was not at all offended. 'If you will promise not to laugh at me,' she answered, 'I will tell you as much as I know about it; but to myself it is a mystery which I cannot explain. There is a particular spot ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... like a nightmare; it haunted his fancy with visions of guilty memory, and shapes of horrible regret. The ghosts of buried misdoings, which he had thought long-lost in the mists of recollection, started up menacingly from their forgotten graves, and made him shrink with a sense of their awful reality. Behind him, like a wilderness, lay years which the locust had eaten; the entrusted hours which had passed away, and been reckoned ...

— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... the doom of the hypocrite is so fearful! When his cloak is removed and the wolf appears in the presence of the angels, will they not shrink from him as one of us would shrink from a viper ...

— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... said because the delicate ever shrink from affixing a value to the time and services of others. Adrienne was afraid she might unintentionally deprive the other of a portion of her just gains. The woman understood by the timidity and undecided manner of the applicant, that she had a very unpracticed ...

— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

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