Definitions

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

  • adjective Overgrown with moss.
  • adjective Old-fashioned; antiquated.

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

  • adjective On which moss is growing.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

moss +‎ grown

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Examples

  • The last house vanished, glowing in the early sunshine, and the carriage with its trail of dust became entombed once more in the gloom of tall trees, along a road that cleft a wilderness of mossgrown rocks, and dewy stems, through which the sun had not yet driven paths.

    Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works John Galsworthy 1900

  • The last house vanished, glowing in the early sunshine, and the carriage with its trail of dust became entombed once more in the gloom of tall trees, along a road that cleft a wilderness of mossgrown rocks, and dewy stems, through which the sun had not yet driven paths.

    Villa Rubein, and other stories John Galsworthy 1900

  • Highway -- between Boston and Philadelphia, there are mossgrown stones that were set under the supervision of Benjamin Franklin when he was colonial Postmaster-General.

    Customs and Fashions in Old New England Alice Morse Earle 1881

  • If a planter of the days when the royal colony of South Carolina was in the height of its glory could return now, and wander through the streets of mossgrown Beaufort, he would be amazed, but no more so than would the planter of 1850 or 1860, if he too might return.

    The Great South; A Record of Journeys in Louisiana, Texas, the Indian Territory, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland 1875

  • How well she remembered the neglected air of the place when last she had seen it -- the mossgrown walks, the duckweed in the moat, the straggling rose-bushes, everything out of order, from the broken weathercock on one of the gateway towers, to the scraper by the half-glass door in one corner of the quadrangle, which had been, used instead of the chief entrance!

    The Lovels of Arden 1875

  • The thatch of the sheds was all worn away, mossgrown, and bored by the sparrows.

    Hodge and His Masters Richard Jefferies 1867

  • In the garden three or four aged and mossgrown apple-trees stood among the little plots of potatoes, and as many plum-trees in the elder hedge.

    Hodge and His Masters Richard Jefferies 1867

  • Still wakest thou, cheerful Light, the weary man to his labour, and into me pourest gladsome life; but thou wilest me not away from Memory's mossgrown monument.

    Rampolli George MacDonald 1864

  • She tried to scrape the mossgrown Triton, she crept up stairs to the window that looked towards the City, and cleared off some of the dimness, and she got a needle and thread and tried to darn the holes in the curtains and cushions, but the rotten stuff crumbled under her fingers, and would not hold the stitches.

    Love and Life An Old Story in Eighteenth Century Costume Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862

  • There are mountains beyond mountains lying against the sky, heather clad or mossgrown; there are small lakes lying at the foot of mountains or between mountains; there are dreary expanses of bog stretching for miles on each side of the road between us and the mountains, and rising out of the bog are wee bits of fields and most horrible habitations.

    The Letters of "Norah" on Her Tour Through Ireland Margaret Moran Dixon McDougall 1862

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