From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishwaste away phrasal verbMITHIN PERSONto gradually become thinner and weaker, usually because you are ill → waste→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
waste away• If the patient does not first surrender to a fungus, bacterium or cancer, he wastes away.• Their long shins are clearly defined, yet the fatty calves have wasted away.• In the aquarium, without a fish as a companion, some anemones eventually waste away and die.• Now she was literally wasting away, and his visits were still infrequent.• There was nothing we could do -- she just wasted away and within six weeks she was dead.• His muscles were slowly wasting away because of his illness.• The muscle has the ability to recoil, but when it wastes away, the tissue hasn't.• Respiratory victims commonly wasted away to skin-covered bones.• The answer, if not excuse, is that wrestling might have wasted away without his money.• Victims lay wasting away, yet heavy in their immobility. 