seep away

seep away

1. Literally, of a gas or liquid, to flow out and escape from (something) gradually but steadily, as through a leak, crack, puncture, etc. There must have be a leak in the oil tank of the car, because it keeps seeping away onto the driveway. Make sure you close the valve tight on that jar—we don't want any of the gas to seep away.
2. By extension, to dwindle or disappear gradually but steadily. The goodwill he had earned with his employers began seeping away after he started showing up to work late. Once the undisputed kings of Hollywood, the movie studios good fortunes began to seep away after a series of poor business decisions.
See also: away, seep
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

seep away

[for a fluid] to escape little by little, as through a leak. All the oil seeped away, leaving none in the engine. The water seeped away after a while.
See also: away, seep
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • seep
  • seep out
  • take a leak
  • take a leak, to
  • have a leak
  • seep in
  • seep in(to something)
  • trickle out
  • trickle out (of something or some place)
  • spring a leak
References in periodicals archive
You have to keep yourself hydrated and can't be running about daft because your energy will just seep away.
And the risk of surface water flooding is on the rise because people are increasingly paving over their gardens, giving rain nowhere to seep away, with the area covered by hard surfaces almost doubling to around half of garden space.
And ministers could force them to find ways of collecting the kind of rainfall we had last month instead of letting it seep away into the soil.
And the longer they go without managing that, the more the belief will seep away.
Your creativity can be high, but just as you go and demonstrate this, your energy can seep away, or you can feel overwhelmed by options or possibilities.
But the trees sucked up moisture from the ground and newly dug drainage channels allowed water - the life blood of the bogs - to seep away.
Far better to let the emotion seep away and examine the whole picture more calmly and forensically before deciding whether sweeping change really is such a good idea after all.
However, should Pierce's timing be fractionally out of synch against Likhovtseva, she could make more errors and her newfound self-belief may steadily seep away.
We learned to prioritize the work at hand and direct all our energy, to the one particular job we were facing at each moment Ven.Mother said "if you think of them all at once it would seep away your energy."
Stand your trough(s) in a sunny spot, on purpose made feet or on bricks or stones to help avoid rain splashing and to ensure that drainage water can seep away. A display can look really effective if the troughs are placed at varying heights.
Ideal bedtime reading in fact as it gets you relaxed, laughing and smiling at the situations and descriptions, while feeling your stress seep away. In many ways this book is apolitical - even though it describes how Johnson was striving to win the seat for the Conservative Party.
It's no coincidence the feel-good factor that has rightly enveloped Goodison for much of the campaign started to seep away since the failure, for whatever reason, to strengthen during the January transfer window.
"Had we conceded then, it would have seen all our confidence totally seep away. The players are all buoyant back in the dressing room.
The former is far less serious but the latter can see the value of shares seep away over several years.
At the end of the Seventies, New Music faced a real crisis in Britain when the already tiny audiences began to seep away. Little did anyone realise then that classical music was about to undergo a massive resurgence in popularity.