Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The quality or condition of being weakened, worn out, impaired, or broken down by old age, illness, or hard use.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state of being broken down by infirmities, physical or mental, especially infirmities of age.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The broken state produced by decay and the infirmities of age; infirm old age.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun the state of being decrepit or worn out from age or long use

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a state of deterioration due to old age or long use

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin decrepitudo ("decrepitude").

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Examples

  • The most apropos description of this cycle of inherent decrepitude is perhaps the Yiddish word schlock, meaning something "cheap, shoddy, or inferior."

    Schlock Doctrine: Where, and by Whom, Was Your Christmas Made? 2010

  • The most apropos description of this cycle of inherent decrepitude is perhaps the Yiddish word schlock, meaning something "cheap, shoddy, or inferior."

    Randall Amster: Schlock Doctrine: Where, and by Whom, Was Your Christmas Made? 2010

  • The most apropos description of this cycle of inherent decrepitude is perhaps the Yiddish word schlock, meaning something "cheap, shoddy, or inferior."

    Randall Amster: Schlock Doctrine: Where, and by Whom, Was Your Christmas Made? 2009

  • The most apropos description of this cycle of inherent decrepitude is perhaps the Yiddish word schlock, meaning something "cheap, shoddy, or inferior."

    RSSMicro Search - Top News on RSS Feeds 2009

  • The most apropos description of this cycle of inherent decrepitude is perhaps the Yiddish word schlock, meaning something "cheap, shoddy, or inferior."

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com 2009

  • Alas, no one understands that the world is sinking on the ocean of Time that is so very deep and that is infested with those huge crocodiles called decrepitude and death.

    The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 Kisari Mohan [Translator] Ganguli

  • The last two stages, old age — up to seventy years — and the remaining years of very old age or "decrepitude," are the periods in life in which people "have very weak natural heat [and] the superfluities increase."

    Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico 2008

  • Here, "decrepitude" means that things are torn away from "world," from a richer network of meaningfulness, and are instead substitutable, indifferent items in the technological ordering of reality.

    Archive 2008-03-01 enowning 2008

  • Here, "decrepitude" means that things are torn away from "world," from a richer network of meaningfulness, and are instead substitutable, indifferent items in the technological ordering of reality.

    enowning enowning 2008

  • They tended to be depressing these visits: the married sister was living in a small way; the first cousin seemed to have got into a rut; the uncle and aunt were failing, with a stooping, trembling, old-fashioned kind of decrepitude, a rigidity of body and mind, which somehow one didn't see much over home.

    The Imperialist Sara Jeannette Duncan

Comments

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  • An (far related) antonym for pulchritude.

    September 24, 2012