Definitions

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

  • verb Present participle of moulder.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • As for Pisa at large, although it is not exactly what one would call a mouldering city -- for it has a certain well-aired cleanness and brightness, even in its supreme tranquillity -- it affects the imagination very much in the same way as the Campo

    Italian Hours Henry James 1879

  • She had on a white-cashmere dressing-gown trimmed with swan's-down, and she lay among the luxurious cushions of a blue lounge, with a paler blue blanket, which she had had one of us tricot for her, lying over her feet, and altogether she looked very ideal and ethereal; for Aunt Pen always did have such an eye to picturesque effect that I don't know how she could ever consent to the idea of mouldering away into dust like common clay.

    Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature Various

  • He had heard people defend this nomad life -- why, he himself, before his marriage, had smiled at the old-fashioned stability represented by such families as the Mortons; had talked of 'getting into ruts', of 'mouldering', and so on.

    The Whirlpool George Gissing 1880

  • Although (he writes) “Mine have been anything but studious hours,” he professes to have received great solace from those “repositories of 'mouldering' learning.”

    Charles Lamb Cornwall, Barry 1866

  • Although (he writes) "Mine have been anything but studious hours," he professes to have received great solace from those "repositories of 'mouldering' learning."

    Charles Lamb Barry Cornwall 1830

  • I mean, one slice is quietly mouldering away, and the other is just plain stale.

    I count coup on Senator Chris Dodd (D-Countrywide). - Moe_Lane’s blog - RedState 2010

  • By the time torture became an article of faith in the Republican Church (around 2004) the country had long been mouldering.

    Matthew Yglesias » Torture and Stick-Beating 2010

  • I kind of hate seeing stacks of them mouldering on doorsteps for weeks on end.

    Let’s build a giant fort with them! 2010

  • We've mainly been mouldering around the house in these short days, dozing and squabbling.

    Diary of a separation 2012

  • One more thing - just seeing that picture at the top of the thread churns my stomach with the smell of stale beer and and nasty mouldering soda reaching it's half-life in the bowels of it, because it hasn't been emptied in some time, and it's 90º outside.

    For bottle return mess, a new idea (Jack Bog's Blog) 2009

Comments

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  • "On the mouldering citadel of Troy lies the lizard like a thing of green bronze." - Oscar Wilde, Critic as Artist

    October 14, 2009