Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act or process of molting; molt.
  • noun The molting season.

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

  • noun The act or process by which an animal molts; especially, the periodic shedding of the cuticle in arthropods or the outer skin in reptiles, or feathers in birds.

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

  • verb Present participle of molt.

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

  • noun periodic shedding of the cuticle in arthropods or the outer skin in reptiles

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Ecdysone therefore is sometimes called molting hormone.

    The Human Brain Asimov, Isaac 1963

  • Once a year, for the duration of their lives, penguins lose and replace every single feather on their bodies in a process called molting.

    The Great Penguin Rescue Dyan DeNapoli 2010

  • This process of casting off the old skin is called molting, and is repeated four times during the one, two, three or more weeks of larval life.

    Insects and Diseases A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread or Cause some of our Common Diseases Rennie Wilbur Doane

  • Soft shell crabs are crabs that are molting, which is when the hard shell of the crab grows about 30 percent.

    Serious Eats: New York 2009

  • It's called molting and it is very important. is becoming a very common bird in our area.

    chron.com Chronicle 2009

  • They seem to keep molting, meaning they're most likely growing.

    childrens' books, spiders, mithras, martian halloween badger 2005

  • Faced with few alternatives to reduce the oppressive debt burden incurred through the 2008 Fording Coal acquisition, Teck continues to slough off gold assets like some kind of molting serpent.

    Fool.com: The Motley Fool 2009

  • From seeing the need for general digital publishing, to changing the business to focus on a gap in the ecology, to expanding outwards to the creation of standalone software and a retail channel, to the building of a document business, and now to the building of a universal media-application platform ... each "molting" of the business required a clear commitment to the next generation of growth ... betting big on that inevitability which cannot yet be proven.

    Adobe Blogs 2008

  • Fossil groupings of up to 1000 trilobites suggest they were social creatures, at least while molting.

    Social Trilobites 2009

  • Fossil groupings of up to 1000 trilobites suggest they were social creatures, at least while molting.

    Archive 2009-05-01 2009

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