DECAY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Decay

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/dəkˈeɪ/ /dɪkˈeɪ/ Listen

noun

Decay n.

Gradual failure of health, strength, soundness, prosperity, or of any species of excellence or perfection; tendency toward dissolution or extinction; corruption; rottenness; decline; deterioration; as, the decay of the body; the decay of virtue; the decay of the Roman empire; a castle in decay. "Perhaps my God, though he be far before, May turn, and take me by the hand, and more May strengthen my decays." "His (Johnson's) failure was not to be ascribed to intellectual decay." "Which has caused the decay of the consonants to follow somewhat different laws."

Destruction; death. (Obs.)

Cause of decay. (R.) "He that plots to be the only figure among ciphers, is the decay of the whole age."

Synonyms: Decline; consumption. See Decline.

verb

Decay v. t.

To cause to decay; to impair. (R.) "Infirmity, that decays the wise."

To destroy. (Obs.)

Decay v. i. (past & past part. decayed; pres. part. decaying) To pass gradually from a sound, prosperous, or perfect state, to one of imperfection, adversity, or dissolution; to waste away; to decline; to fail; to become weak, corrupt, or disintegrated; to rot; to perish; as, a tree decays; fortunes decay; hopes decay. "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay."

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Etymology of 'Decay'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Decay" Quotes from Famous Books

... there was no apparent decay in the old man's intellect. He had never been much given to literary pursuits, but that which he had always done he did still. A daily copy of whatever might be the most thoroughly Conservative paper of the day he always read carefully from ...

— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... within the reach of, or suited to the taste of, the citizens of an ordered state. It is little wonder that the boy regards the moral law as a nuisance and the state as a suitable refuge for those suffering from senile decay. ...

— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... himself set the fashion of a semi-professed infidelity; and amid his most intimate associates there were many to adopt with readiness a theory which saved them from the trouble and expense of a scrupulous conscience. With Bruce this infidelity was rather the decay of faith than the growth of positive disbelief. He had dipped with a kind of wilful curiosity into Strauss's Life of Jesus, and other books of a similar description, together with such portions of current literature as were most clever in sneering at Christianity, or most ...

— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... woe, the periods of growth, of maturity, and of age, the blessedness of creative effort in religion, polity, and art, the comfort of enjoying the material and intellectual acquisitions which it has won, perhaps also, some day, the decay of productive power in the satiety of contentment with the goal attained. And yet this goal will only be temporary: the grandest system of civilization has its orbit, and may complete its course but not so the human race, to which, just ...

— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... papal ballast; 4. that he eliminated the Romish interpretation and adulteration in the interest of work-righteousness; 5. that he refilled the ancient forms with their genuine Evangelical and Scriptural meaning. Before Luther's time the study of the Catechism had everywhere fallen into decay. There were but few who knew its text, and when able to recite it, they did not understand it. The soul of all Christian truths, the Gospel of God's free pardon for Christ's sake, had departed. Concerning "the three parts which ...

— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

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