Definitions

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

  • noun The state or quality of being mouldy.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

mouldy +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • There was a lean, saturnine lieutenant in the R.N.V.R. there that she knew as Mouldy James; she was not sure if the mouldiness was his nature or whether it meant that he had specialised in torpedoes.

    In Spite of Their Declaration of Bombs 2010

  • A day or two before, the Scotch Gardener had brought Saxon to see us, and a new kind of mouldiness that had got into his grape vines to show to John.

    Mary's Meadow; and Letters From a Little Garden 1886

  • A day or two before, the Scotch Gardener had brought Saxon to see us, and a new kind of mouldiness that had got into his grape vines to show to John.

    Mary's Meadow And Other Tales of Fields and Flowers Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing 1863

  • Although she had been lying in the strong sunshine, the flesh was quite good, when we had scraped away a little mouldiness.

    The South Pole~ The Return to Framheim 2009

  • I went to the Auction Room in question, and I found it entirely empty of everything but echoes and mouldiness, with the single exception of

    Doctor Marigold 2007

  • Having found such a volume it was left about in the dust, on the stove, on the ground, in the kitchen, and even in what the clerks called the “chamber of deliberations”; and thus it obtained a mouldiness to delight an antiquary, cracks of aged dilapidation, and broken corners that looked as though the rats had gnawed them; also, the gilt edges were tarnished with surprising perfection.

    A Start in Life 2007

  • I went to the Auction Room in question, and I found it entirely empty of everything but echoes and mouldiness, with the single exception of

    Doctor Marigold 2007

  • All the empty casks I have smelt in the cellars inspected are impregnated with bad odours, which are not detected by the majority of the owners, in consequence of having accustomed their olfactory organs to the predominant odour of mouldiness in their cellars, and so they are unable to detect if the odour of their casks is healthy or not.

    The Art of Living in Australia 2004

  • The appliances required for winemaking are all round badly preserved, and are covered with mouldiness and dust.

    The Art of Living in Australia 2004

  • They lived without employment remote from the apartments, slept at night in the gardens, ate the refuse from the kitchens, — a human mouldiness vegetating in the shadow of the palace.

    Salammbo 2003

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