taper

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A small or very slender candle.
2. n. A long wax-coated wick used to light candles or gas lamps.
3. n. A source of feeble light.
4. n. A gradual decrease in thickness or width of an elongated object.
5. n. A gradual decrease, as in action or force.
6. v. To become gradually narrower or thinner toward one end.
7. v. To diminish or lessen gradually. Often used with off: The storm finally tapered off.
8. v. To make thinner or narrower at one end.
9. v. To make smaller gradually.
10. adj. Gradually decreasing in size toward a point.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A gradual decrease of power or capacity.
2. n. A candle, especially a very slender candle; any device for giving light by the agency of a wick coated with combustible matter.
3. Long and becoming slenderer toward the point; becoming small toward one end.
4. Diminished; reduced.
5. To become taper; become gradually slenderer; grow less in diameter; diminish in one direction.
6. To diminish; grow gradually less.
7. To spring up in or as in a tall, tapering form.
8. To stop slowly or by degrees; cease gradually.
9. To cause to taper; make gradually smaller, especially in diameter; cause to diminish toward a point.
10. n. Tapering form; gradual diminution of thickness in an elongated object; that which possesses a tapering form: as, the taper of a spire.

Wiktionary

1. n. A slender wax candle; a small lighted wax candle; hence, a small light.
2. n. A tapering form; gradual diminution of thickness and/or cross section in an elongated object
3. v. transitive To make thinner or narrower at one end.
4. v. intransitive To diminish gradually.
5. n. weaving One who operates a tape machine.
6. n. Someone who works with tape or tapes.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A small wax candle; a small lighted wax candle; hence, a small light.
2. n. A tapering form; gradual diminution of thickness in an elongated object.
3. adj. Regularly narrowed toward the point; becoming small toward one end; conical; pyramidical.
4. v. To become gradually smaller toward one end.
5. v. To make or cause to taper.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. diminish gradually
2. n. a convex shape that narrows toward a point
3. n. stick of wax with a wick in the middle
4. n. a loosely woven cord (in a candle or oil lamp) that draws fuel by capillary action up into the flame
5. n. the property possessed by a shape that narrows toward a point (as a wedge or cone)
6. v. give a point to