Peter Out
Meaning
Dwindle away to nothing.
Origin
The earliest use of peter as a verb meaning dwindle relate to the mining industry in the USA in the mid-19th century. It is reasonable to accept that that is when and where it originated. Thoughts of US mining at that date brings to mind images of the California Gold Rush, which is sometimes suggested as the source of this phrase. The earliest use of peter that is known is found in the Illinois newspaper The Quincy Whig, January 1846, which that pre-dates the California rush:
“When my mineral petered why they all Petered me.”
The first known record of the addition of ‘out’ to ‘peter’ is in the American lawyer and writer Henry Hiram Riley’s collection of articles – Puddleford and its people, 1854:
“He hoped this ‘spectable meeting warn’t going to Peter-out.”
