half-ruinous

Mannering, some "veterans of the law" are seen to play High Jinks in a "paltry and half-ruinous" tavern in Edinburgh Old Town in the early 1780s; they are lingering representatives of a tradition about to be displaced by new buildings and new manners (203-205).

Walter Scott, Politeness, and Patriotism 2006

It was a November morning, and the cliffs which overlooked the ocean were hung with thick and heavy mist, when the portals of the ancient and half-ruinous tower, in which Lord Ravenswood had spent the last and troubled years of his life, opened, that his mortal remains might pass forward to an abode yet more dreary and lonely.

The Bride of Lammermoor 2008

About the centre of it is the palace of the Sultan, now a large untidy, half-ruinous building of stone.

The Malay Archipelago 2004

AS you walk through the industrial towns you lose yourself in labyrinths of little brick houses blackened by smoke, festering in planless chaos round miry alleys and little cindered yards where there are stinking dust-bins and lines of grimy washing and half-ruinous w.c.s. The interiors of these houses are always very much the same, though the number of rooms varies between two or five.

The Road to Wigan Pier 2004

The governor, for so we must term him, having conducted Waverley to a half-ruinous apartment, where, however, there was a small camp-bed, and having offered him any refreshment which he desired, was then about to leave him.

Waverley 2004

When the carriage drew up in the grass - grown court yard before the hall-door, two lazy-looking men, whose appearance well accorded with that of the place which they tenanted, alarmed by the obstreperous barking of a great chained dog, ran out from some half-ruinous out-houses, and took charge of the horses; the hall-door stood open, and I entered a gloomy and imperfectly lighted apartment, and found no one within.

The Purcell Papers 2003

That church, whose dark, half-ruinous turrets overlooked the square, was the venerable and formerly opulent shrine of the Magi.

Villette 2003

The very neglect and half-ruinous state of all this made it only the prettier, as well as sadder.

The Room in the Dragon Volant 2003

Or the little company, some of them women, trying to defend the top of a tall and half-ruinous building with rifles and pistols.

Space Viking Piper, H. Beam 1963

Accordingly she was soon wending among all the intricacies and solemn grandeur of a huge and half-ruinous hotel.

The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 Various