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Waning Moon
"Waning" simply means shrinking — a Waning Moon is any point in the roughly two-week stretch after Full Moon, when the illuminated portion visible from Earth steadily decreases night by night until it disappears entirely at the New Moon. It covers four named stages in order: Waning Gibbous (still more than half-lit), Last Quarter (exactly half), Waning Crescent (a thin sliver), and finally New Moon. MOONX shows exactly which of the four waning stages the Moon is in today, with the real illumination percentage — not just "waning," but how far along.
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What the Waning Moon means
In the Northern Hemisphere, a Waning Moon is lit on its left side; in the Southern Hemisphere, the right — the opposite of a Waxing Moon. Because it's the mirror image of the Moon's growth phase, waning has picked up a cultural association with releasing, closing out, and finishing rather than starting — you'll find this in journaling and planning traditions across cultures, independent of the astronomy itself, which is neutral: it's simply the geometry of the Moon's orbit relative to the sun and Earth.
