1. To grow thin or weak with longing, grief, etc: If Terry continues to mourn for his dead parents, he will pine away and die, too.
2. To have a great desire or longing for someone or something: It was sad to see Bill pine all these months for his college sweetheart.
3. Etymology: From Middle English pinen, which came from Old English pinian, "to torture, to torment, to afflict"; from pin, "pain", ultimately from Latin poena, "punishment".

To pine or "to languish" is a derivative of an unrecorded Old English noun pine, "torture", originally borrowed into Germanic from pena, the post-classical descendant of Latin poena, "penalty" which is also the source of English pain.

Pine was one of the words introduced into Germanic with Christianity, and in English it was applied first to the "pains of hell". The noun has not been found in Old English; however, the verb pinian was common from an early period.