'shrivel' is an acceptable word in written English.
You can use it when describing a person or object that is becoming smaller or losing its shape due to lack of water or heat. For example, "The plant's leaves began to shrivel as the hot summer days went by."
Common spring butterflies – orange tips, peacocks, large whites – have been plentiful so far, and fears that it would get too dry (butterflies don't generally thrive in droughts because caterpillars' food plants shrivel and die) have been assuaged by April showers.
Even the "big cuts debate" seemed to shrivel to a question simply of timing – cuts this year or next.
But regardless of what specific plan finally gets approved, when Toronto's immigrant landmark is transformed into the inevitable chain-retail, street-level mall, and the existing eateries of Mirvish Village are thrust into their new role as what the Globe and Mail breathlessly describes as "destination restaurants", one of the ventricles of indie Toronto's heart will shrivel.
It may shrivel further as official campaigning begins next week and Mr Neves becomes better known outside his home state of Minas Gerais and as inflation continues to eat into Brazilian pockets.
Those who are still employed have seen their wages stagnate and their pensions shrivel in the stockmarket crash.
The Protection of Freedoms Bill will shrivel DNA databases, regulate CCTV, extend freedom-of-information access, halve the amount of time terrorism suspects can be held without charge and scale back the sprawling Criminal Records Bureau background check.
Of the successor firms, the one that maintained a relationship with the original firm's global network would have a huge advantage over its sibling, which could shrivel, failing to turn the Big Four into a Big Five even in Britain, much less around the world.Action on the European Union level looks more promising.
As the Zimbabwe dollar gradually became worthless, civil servants, including teachers and doctors, saw their pay shrivel until there was no point in working.
And so, much as the rise of oath-taking legalism made possible the Lewinsky scandal, the rise of tolerance is now causing the scandal to shrivel into nothing.Over the past year, two competing American impulses have slogged it out.
Disabling the messengers of the gene that encodes a receptor protein called TGF beta-R2, which is found on cell surfaces, caused cells that had once been resistant to Xalkori to shrivel in its presence.
Lack of vitamin A causes membranes around the organs to shrivel, leaving them vulnerable.
