English Dictionary |
DECAYED
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Dictionary entry overview: What does decayed mean?
• DECAYED (adjective)
The adjective DECAYED has 1 sense:
1. damaged by decay; hence unsound and useless
Familiarity information: DECAYED used as an adjective is very rare.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
Damaged by decay; hence unsound and useless
Synonyms:
Context example:
a decayed foundation
Similar:
unsound (not in good condition; damaged or decayed)
Context examples
It is a sum of the total number of teeth that are decayed, missing, or filled.
(Decayed, Missing, and Filled Teeth Index, NCI Thesaurus)
No, it is not thus; your form so divinely wrought, and beaming with beauty, has decayed, but your spirit still visits and consoles your unhappy friend.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
I must say, I like to serve a decayed gentleman better than a blarnerying beggar.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
As her French sisters decayed she increased, for here, from north, and from east, and from south, came the plunder to be sold and the ransom money to be spent.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Any process by which decayed tooth material is removed from the tooth.
(Caries Removal, NCI Thesaurus)
These umbrellas are remnants of an ancient global field that decayed billions of years ago.
(Auroras on Mars, NASA)
But all these tokens of past grandeur were miserably decayed and dirty; rot, damp, and age, had weakened the flooring, which in many places was unsound and even unsafe.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
He is usually governed by a decayed wench, or favourite footman, who are the tunnels through which all graces are conveyed, and may properly be called, in the last resort, the governors of the kingdom.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
But where the conical explosive bullets of the twentieth century were of no avail, the poisoned arrows of the natives, dipped in the juice of strophanthus and steeped afterwards in decayed carrion, could succeed.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Round the corner from the by-street, there was a square of ancient, handsome houses, now for the most part decayed from their high estate and let in flats and chambers to all sorts and conditions of men; map-engravers, architects, shady lawyers and the agents of obscure enterprises.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
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