thin out

present singular third person thins out · participle present thinning out · participle past thinned out · past thinned out

1. transitiveTo make sparse; to remove some of a group of newly-planted plants in order to allow the remaining ones to grow unimpeded.
2. intransitiveTo become sparse.

   And later on, when the crowd thinned out / I was just about to do the same / She was standing there in back of my chair / Said to me, "Don't I know your name?"

   1975, Bob Dylan, “Tangled Up in Blue”, in Blood on the Tracks

   2 more examples

   “Abandon Starbucks!” screamed a member of the staff, and his colleagues immediately stopped making coffees or bagging muffins and ran for their lives “It seems to be thinning out a little, ” announced Mr. Stink

   2009 October 29, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Mr Stink, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN

   The numbers thin out the further we get from London, so I don't feel guilty when I remove my mask momentarily to scoff some of the snacks I'd bought at Marylebone.

   2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 68