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Rot   Listen
verb
Rot  v. i.  (past & past part. rotted; pres. part. rotting)  
1.
To undergo a process common to organic substances by which they lose the cohesion of their parts and pass through certain chemical changes, giving off usually in some stages of the process more or less offensive odors; to become decomposed by a natural process; to putrefy; to decay. "Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot, To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot."
2.
Figuratively: To perish slowly; to decay; to die; to become corrupt. "Four of the sufferers were left to rot in irons." "Rot, poor bachelor, in your club."
Synonyms: To putrefy; corrupt; decay; spoil.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rot" Quotes from Famous Books



... written in a bold round hand and addressed to Elizabeth. The ships' companies which in summer served in Philip's men-of-war went in winter in thousands to catch cod on the Banks of Newfoundland. 'Give me five vessels,' the writer said, 'and I will go out and sink them all, and the galleons shall rot in Cadiz Harbour for want of hands to sail them. But decide, Madam, and decide quickly. Time flies, and will not return. The wings of man's life are plumed with the feathers ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... "Pretty good rot," he said, "talking like that to a man in my position. Cursing a married man with a family as if he were a rotten schoolboy. If I met him in ordinary life he'd say 'Sir' to me—probably ask me for a job, and go about in a holy fear that I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various

... so stately, with broad green leaves and gaily tasseled shocks, filled with the sweet milky flour, the staff of life,—who, I say, could see without grief these sacred plants sinking under our swords with all their precious load, to wither and rot untasted in ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... cried Hayden naively. "Of course, of course," as her laughter swelled, "I know you've flattered me to death," the red rising in his tanned cheek, "with all that rot about my grin. But," speaking louder in the effort to drown those trills and ripples of melodious laughter, more elfishly mocking and elusive than ever, "your portrait of me, no matter how grossly exaggerated, is in ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... valiant Miltiades rot in his fetters? The just Phocion, and the accomplished Socrates, put to death like traitors? The cruel Severus live prosperously? The excellent Severus miserably murdered? [Footnote: Of the two Severi, the earlier, who persecuted ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... I can speak out decently. No one could think I cared for her money, or any of that rot now. How unexpected!—this morning! Now I can tell her I'm free, independent! I am glad I waited—it was much better. Far better, as I said, to be patient. Last night I almost—and now I'm very ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross

... "Fair? Rot! That's chucking your chances away. That's playing the fool! What's he got to do with your life before you met him?" This was ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... the Latisan mill and the houses of the village while he talked; the moon lighted all and the mill loomed importantly, reflected in the still water of the pond. If Craig prevailed, the mill and the homes must be left to rot, empty, idle, and worthless. As Ward viewed it, the honor of the Latisans was at stake; the spirit of old John blazed in the grandson; but he declared his intention to fight man fashion, if the fight ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... natural advantages of a country are developed not as a matter of taste, but as a matter of profit. The crops which can be raised to best advantage in this region are the crops which without a railroad must rot on the ground. No man can be expected to settle in a new country from pure Quixotism,—and nothing but the railroad would make anything else of his expenditure of energies beyond the needs of self-support. The Plains are the natural ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... But how is it provided in a majority of cases? The grass is cut out of season; is cured negligently, very likely is exposed to rain; and then piled up to mold and rot. A few tarpaulins to put over the cocks in case of rain, and barracks or mow to protect and preserve the hay would give the horse good hay, and be one of the very best of investments. It should be remembered that the digestive organs of none other ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... and mostly with titles; our own family pipers, never less than six, playing for the reels. My daughter has taken lessons, and I tell you she can give points to some of those Calvanistic cats with Macs to their names, and a lot of rot about clans, who think just because they're Scotch they're everybody. Why, some of the old nobility up there have got such poor, degenerated taste in decoration, they have nasty plaid carpets ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the admiralty and of some official residences. Another court-martial acquitted Palliser though with a slight censure. Keppel was annoyed by the position taken up by the admiralty, notified his wish not to serve again under the present ministry, and struck his flag. The rot of faction, which was infecting political life, laid some hold on the navy. Other naval officers declared that they would not serve under Sandwich; the spirit of insubordination affected the seamen and symptoms of mutiny appeared in the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... liar. My uncle never liked me. It is very doubtful if he leaves me more than a moderate bequest, even now. But I have at least made sure that he leaves nothing to Stan. And now I shall strip his mine from him and leave him to rot in the penitentiary. For I always hated him, quite aside from any thought of my uncle's estate. I hate him for what he is. I always wanted to trample his girl-face in ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... person who observes it for the first time. The snow disappears with a marvellous rapidity. The ice, that was like granite in hardness and several feet thick on the great lakes, becomes dark and porous, and in spots literally seems to rot away. Then along the great cracks, where it had burst by the power of the terrible frost some months before, it now opens, and soon great fields of it become floating masses on the waters. Under the action of the brilliant rays of the sun it ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young

... exclaimed Melville, drawing back a step or two. "I couldn't, Kip. Don't put me in such a hole. I wouldn't dare. Straight goods, I wouldn't. You don't know my dad. Why, he wouldn't even hear me out. He'd say at the outset that it was all rot and that he couldn't be bothered with ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... by the shores of the lake; but Tumpwinai'rogwinump was left to rot and his bones to bleach on the sands, as he ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... he said, in that loud voice which, with all due deference, usually marks the Harrovian, "how many have you got for me? No rot now! I want ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... "who think they'll learn what it's like to be a working girl, and stand behind a perfumery counter! Somebody's always trying to find out what it's like to be a worker—and then they get a lot of noteriety writin' articles about it. All rot, I say. Pity, if they really want to know what workin's like, they wouldn't ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... my doubts about his ever being at Oxford, and I take no stock at all in the rest of that guff. It is barely possible that he may have been over to England, but the yarn about his having traveled in South America, Africa and Europe, is the biggest sort of rot." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... tempestuous weather, they could not live out of port. Indeed, they are good for nothing but in smooth water during a calm; when, by dint of rowing, they make good way. The king of Sardinia is so sensible of their inutility, that he intends to let his gallies rot; and, in lieu of them, has purchased two large frigates in England, one of fifty, and another of thirty guns, which are now in the harbour of Ville Franche. He has also procured an English officer, one Mr. A—, who is second in command on board of one of them, and has ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... sneered Fletcher, going up the steps and turning on the porch to look down upon her. "I tell you I've had as many of 'em as I'm going to stand. This is my house, and what I say in it has got to be the last word. If you squirt any more of that blamed water around here the place will rot to pieces under our ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... "Od rot your bones!" snarled the one-eyed man and spat towards me, whereat I raised my staff and he, lifting an arm, took the blow on his elbow-joint and writhed, cursing; but while I laughed at the fellow's contortions, the plump man sprang (marvellous nimble) and dashed out the light and, as I stepped ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... pyrites really could produce "stars" from the flint, the two hurried down-stream, in search of the right kind of wood. In half an hour Corrus came across a dead, worm-eaten tree, from which he nonchalantly broke off a limb as big as his leg. The interior was filled with a dry, stringy rot, just the right thing ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... which is sown afterwards in June. In order to secure a good crop, it is necessary that the ground should be well manured with lupins, which are either grown for this single purpose the year before, and left to rot, or boiled to prevent their germination, and then scattered over the field. The Grand Turk commonly carries but one head on his shoulders, but occasionally we have remarked two or more on the same stem. In the year 1817, the sack (160 lbs.) fetched ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... sentimental jor and cold chuck-out, it do. They may call their big Committees, and may chat till all is blue, But to shift me till they gives me somethink sweeter is all rot; Better leave my garret winder, and the flower in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various

... true is it that visible misery will raise us to exertion, which the picture, however powerfully delineated, can never produce. The thousands daily knelled out of the world, who lie in gorgeous sepulchres, or rot unburied on the surface of the earth, excite no emotion compared to that conjured up by the meanest dead at our feet. We read of tens of thousands killed and wounded in battle, and the glory of their deeds, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... mountain-side! Ho, dwellers in the vales! Ho, ye who by the chafing tide Have roughened in the gales! Leave barn and byre, leave kin and cot, Lay by the bloodless spade: Let desk and case and counter rot, And burn your ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... line of such service should be required. The paper work in the Army, as in the Navy, should be greatly reduced. What is needed is proved power of command and capacity to work well in the field. Constant care is necessary to prevent dry rot in the transportation and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... hands upon her. "None whatever," he told her recklessly. "The only thing in life that counts is you—just you. Because we love each other, the whole world is ours for the taking. No, listen, darling! I'm not talking rot. Do you remember the last time we were together? How I swore I would conquer—for your sake? Well,—I've done it. I have conquered. Now that that devil Kieff is dead, there is no reason why I shouldn't keep straight always. And so I have come ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... nothing. Imagine Hercules as oarsman in a rotten boat; what can he do there but by the very force of his stroke expedite the ruin of his craft? Take care then of the timbers of your boat, and avoid all practices likely to introduce either wet or dry rot amongst them. And this is not to be accomplished by desultory or intermittent efforts of the will, but by the formation of habits. The will no doubt has sometimes to put forth its strength in order to crush the special temptation. But the formation of right habits is essential to your permanent ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... required; the supply pipe should be run into the bottom of the trough of the liming machine and not over the top, in which latter case it may splash on to the cloths and lead to overliming, which is not to be desired on account of its liability to rot the cloth. The amount of lime used varies in different bleachworks, and there is no rule on the subject; about 5 lb. to 7 lb. of dry lime to 100 lb. of cloth may be taken as a ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech

... parties and never to private views. He thought such things "all damned rot." Few functions connected with the arts appealed to his frankly Philistine spirit, which rejoiced in celebrations linked with the glories of the body; boxing and wrestling matches, acrobatic performances, weight-lifting exhibitions, and so forth. He regretted that bear-baiting ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... last night. I took my little car and drove around the country roads, and the farther I went the more outrageous your position became. I'm not going to write any rot about the world needing men like you, although it's true enough. But our profession does. You working in a gas office, while old O'Hara bungles and hacks, and I struggle along on what I learned ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... and ye took Me not in; naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick and in prison and ye visited Me not. That is: You would have suffered Me and Mine to die of hunger thirst, and cold, would have suffered the wild beasts to tear us to pieces, or left us to rot in prison or perish in distress. What else is that but to reproach them as murderers and bloodhounds? For although you have not actually done all this, you have nevertheless, so far as you were concerned, suffered him to pine and perish in ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther

... last right to which the people clung has been taken from them. Without trial, without appeal, without accuser even, our brothers will be taken from their houses, shot in the streets like dogs, sent away to die in the snow, to starve in the dungeon, to rot in the mine. Do you know what martial law means? It means the strangling of a whole nation. [9]The streets will be filled with soldiers night and day; there will be sentinels at every door.[9] No man dare walk abroad now but the spy or the ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde

... intervention. The first was the rapid success of our armies, coupled as it was with the exhibition of a military spirit and capacity for which European nations had not been prepared by anything in our previous history; and the second was the potato-rot, which brought Great Britain to the verge of famine, and broke up the Tory party. The ill feeling, too, that was created between the English and French governments by the Montpensier marriage, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... culture could not save the Roman Republic from the dry-rot that sapped her vitals from within. As a mere matter of numbers, the actual citizens of Rome or even of the semi-Roman districts close around her were too few to continue fighting over all the vast empire they controlled. The sturdy peasant population of Italy slowly disappeared. The actual ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... would cast it of: I would to God you would tender my soule so as to youse playnnes with me." (As if anything could be plainer than excommunication and banishment!) "I wrot to you both, but now [no] answer; & here I am dayli abused by malischous tongse: John Baker I here hath rot to the honnored depoti how as I was dronck & like to be cild, & both falc, upon okachon I delt with Wanuerton for intrushon, & findding them resolutli bent to rout out all gud a mong us & advanc there superstischous waye, & by boystrous words indeferd to fritten men to acomplish ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... of his, so fervid and so fiery-coloured in its noble eloquence, so rich in its elaborate symphonic music, so sure and certain, at its best, in subtle choice of word and epithet, is at least as great a work of art as any of those wonderful sunsets that bleach or rot on their corrupted canvases in England's Gallery; greater indeed, one is apt to think at times, not merely because its equal beauty is more enduring, but on account of the fuller variety of its appeal, soul speaking to soul in those long-cadenced lines, not through ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... rot, what you say about wanting to forget things," he said. "I went and left my walking-stick in ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... Oh, rot! Give the Irish their heads and they'll run straight enough. Look at the Boers, don't you know. Not half such a decent sort as the Irish. Look at Irish ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... the owls and the bats," said Emlyn. "If they are the better for the silver and gold under them! What good can it do to let it lie there and rot?" ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the candleshades and shakes his head. "You print any such rot as that about me," says he, "and I'll come down and wreck the office. I'm out of all that now, and into something that has opened my eyes to what sort of useless individual I am. Behold, Whitey, one ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford

... were set up, in one of which some relations of the deceased constantly resided, and in the other the chief mourner, who is always a man, and who keeps there a very singular dress in which a ceremony is performed that will be described in its turn. Near the place where the dead are thus set up to rot, the bones are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... of Paris, and after just the first, we—even I—may be the happier. Don't tell anyone that I feel so. I should like to go into a cave for the year. Not that I haven't taken to work again, and to my old interests in politics. One doesn't quite rot in one's selfishness, after all. In fact, I think of myself as little as possible; it's the only way to bear life, to throw oneself out of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... the symptoms. My brother Pat went maudlin, when he was just Skippy's age. Ten years of it, presents Christmas and birthdays, flowers twice a month, postage stamps and letter paper, weekly bulletins and all that sort of rot! Ten years, and then he married a girl, best friend stuff, trust you together and all that—married her a month after he met her. Think of the expense. Not for me, old top—my money goes ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... drunk, of course," the boy answered, as if surprised at her persistence. "Darling, you wouldn't believe me if I told you how much rot-gut Scotch it took to put me under, but that filthy bootlegging hotel clerk would have charged me twice what he did for the stuff if he had known how much good it would ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... o' dread it, but when 't is done you feel like a man. I ain't said nothin' to nobody, but I hoped you'd do what you was a-mind to with your own property. You can't afford to let all that money rot away; ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett

... to and ploughed crossways, which gave it a little better appearance. Then I allowed it a week to rest, taking my spade in the meantime and breaking the lumps and digging in the straying "vraic." At length I had my land in tolerable order, although the seaweed refused to rot as quickly as I desired. I reckoned, however, that it would rot in time, and thus nourish the seed I put ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... was violence within these courts. Domini could imagine the worshippers springing up from their knees to tear to pieces an intruding dog of an unbeliever, then sinking to their knees again while the blood trickled over the sun-dried pavement and the lifeless body, lay there to rot and ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... which are not really turkeys but birds of that size, build big mounds of decaying vegetable matter, lay their eggs on the top, cover them over with leaves, and leave the whole to rot, when the heat of the sun above and of the fermentation below, hatches the eggs, and the young creep out to forage for themselves without ever knowing ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... gentleman.—"The Magistrate told him that he was committing perjury, but the miscreant calling God to witness, that if what he had advanced was not true, he wished that his jaws might be locked and his flesh rot on his bones; and, shocking to relate, his jaws were instantly arrested, and after lingering nearly a fortnight in great anguish, he expired in horrible agonies, his flesh literally rotting ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... cot, where no dry rot Had ever been by tenant seen, Where ivy clung and wopses stung, Where beeses hummed and drummed and strummed, Where treeses grew and breezes blew— A thatchy roof, quite waterproof, Where countless herds of dicky-birds Built twiggy beds to lay their heads (My mother begs I'll make ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... said, "hang lunch—until you understand me. This has been an extraordinary quarter of an hour. I didn't know you had it in you. You women—you have me fairly beat. I just want—I hope—I long for you to believe me, when I tell you that rot she talked about divorce ... that is to say, I swear to you, that, except on circumstantial evidence, you wouldn't have the ghost of a case. But, Marie, on circumstantial evidence, I—I don't know that a judge and ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... sad, too, to think that this waste of life was to benefit but slightly its authors, who would take only the tongues and the better portions of the meat, and leave the rest of the carcass to rot. ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... sanctifieth in matters of this kind. I would no more undo the Reformation now than I would have helped it forward in the sixteenth century. Leave the historic, the unhistoric, and the doubtful to grow together until the harvest: that which is not vital will perish and rot unnoticed when it has ceased to have vitality; it is living till it has done this. Note how the very passages which you would condemn have died out of the regard of any but the poor. Who quotes them? Who appeals ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... varieties of plums, including many of Prof. Hansen's new hybrids. Of these the Opata seems to be the most hardy and prolific, but it is subject to brown rot, which, this past year was so bad that we lost more than half the fruit. We have it top-worked on several varieties of native plums, and it was similarly affected there also. This was the only variety in ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... putrefying, running into sanies, like corpses left to rot in the open air. On the contrary, the birds have dried and hardened, without undergoing any change. What did they want for their putrefaction? simply the intervention of the Fly. The maggot, therefore, is the primary cause of dissolution after death; ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... "Rot! You don't call staying with the duchess a rest-cure? Good heavens, man! You get about the liveliest time of your life when her Grace of Meldrum undertakes to nurse you. Did you hear about old Pilberry the parson, ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay

... length. The rind is rougher than either of the other sorts; the shoulder very broad, growing above the surface of the soil; convex, with a small, short crown. It is much the earliest of the parsnips; and, if left in the ground, is liable to rot in the crown. The leaves also decay much sooner than those of most ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... old ramrod," urged Greg one Saturday night, as he gave great heed to his dressing. "You'll bone yourself dry, staying here all the time with Smith's conic sections. Drop that dry math. rot and stag it with me over at Cullum tonight. You can take math. ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock

... to sleep. Could a grim wolf rival my gentle lamb? No, truly, girl: though in this wilderness The trees hang full of divers colour'd fruit, From orange-tawny to sloe-black, egad, They'll hang until they rot or ere I pluck them, While I've my melting, rosy ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker

... palm nut tree was produced. Probably these nuts formed the principal inducement for the natives to visit this island; and there was abundant testimony under the trees that they were not suffered to fall off and rot. They met with some boughs so ranged as to keep off the southerly winds; and from the fireplaces which they were placed to defend, it was inferred that not less than five or six natives had made this their place of residence, probably a temporary one only, as they did not meet ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... when they found that, though the actions of their life-time had not been entirely pure; though the man had sometimes slaughtered more musk-oxen than he could eat, speared salmon to be devoured by the brown eagle, and gathered rock-moss to rot in the rain; though he had once made mock of a priest, and once trembled at the war-cry of the Knisteneaux, and once forgotten to throw into the fire the tongue of a beaver as an offering to the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... here!" Sloane interrupted again. "You've imposed on my daughter with your talk of being helpful, and all that rot, but you can't hoodwink me. What the devil do you mean by letting that sheriff come in here and subject me to all this annoyance and shock? You'd ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... and without more ado I took hold of Santis by the collar, and swore I would rot let him go till he returned me my ring. The Portuguese rose to come to his friend's rescue, while I stepped back and drew my sword, repeating my determination not to let them go. The landlady came on the scene and began to shriek, and Santis asked me to give him a few words apart. I thought ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... no treating a disease without reading it; and if we are to acknowledge a "vice," as Dr. Shrapnel would say of the so-called middle-class, it is the smirking over what they think, or their not caring to think at all. Too many time-servers rot the State. I can understand the effect of such writing on a mind like Captain Beauchamp's. It would do no harm to our young men to have those letters read publicly and lectured on-by competent persons. Half the thinking world may ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the great Mystic Unknown,—the Eden of Balance,—there lies no retributive Cause to right the injustice of that cruel Effect, let us hope there is no Here-after; that we all die and rot like dogs, who know no justice; that what little kindness and sweetness and right, man, through his happier dreams, his hopeful, cheerful idealism, has tried to establish in the world, may no longer stand as mockery to the Sweet Philosopher who long ago ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... moment. Now you mention it, they are rather a crew. But I shouldn't think they'd find it worth while to rot about here. It isn't as if they were on their native heath. People have a prejudice against having their tent-ropes loosed, and they'd get beans if they did anything in that line. I remember once there was a tent which made itself objectionable, and it got raided in the night ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... dhraw their pay ivry month widout stoppages for riffles. Indirectly, sorr, you have rescued from an onprincipled son av a night- hawk the peasanthry av a numerous village. An' besides, will I let that sedan-chair rot on our hands? Not I. 'Tis not every day a piece av pure joolry comes into the market. There's not a king widin these forty miles'—he waved his hand round the dusty horizon—'not a king wud not be glad to buy ut. Some day meself, whin I have leisure, I'll take ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... trouble that has done this! I wish in my very soul that he who brought it about might die and rot, even if 'tis transportation to ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... then that he flew out at the boatmen and the summer visitors who listen to their tales. Without moving a muscle of his face he emitted a powerful "Rot," from somewhere out of the depths of his chest, and went on in his hoarse, fragmentary mumble. "Stare at the silly rocks—nod their silly heads [the visitors, I presume]. What do they think a man is—blown-out paper bag or what?—go off pop like that ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... of renown! Oh, glory of this earth! That very man whose judgment was so sound and accurate where merit was concerned—he who had swept into his coffers the inheritance of Nicholas Fouquet, who had robbed him of Lenotre and Lebrun, and had sent him to rot for the remainder of his life in one of the state prisons—merely remembered the peaches of that vanquished, crushed, forgotten enemy! It was to little purpose that Fouquet had squandered thirty millions of francs in the fountains of his gardens, in the crucibles ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... husks being given to the hens and the voracious pig. The stalks—hairs, as Anton called them—were again carried to the field, and spread this time on the ground, neither too thick nor too thin, so that sun and moon could shine through them, and alternate rain and sun could rot them. The sooner the stalks decay and the fibres are loosened, the sooner the "hairs" can be carried to the kiln. This ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... there because the law forced me and would let me go nowhere else. Seventeen people were made defendants to that simple suit! It first came on after two years. It was then stopped for another two years while the master (may his head rot off!) inquired whether I was my father's son, about which there was no dispute at all with any mortal creature. He then found out that there were not defendants enough—remember, there were only seventeen as yet!—but that we must have another who had been left out ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... good when I have lost my only child, my poor Sophy, that was the joy of my heart, and all the hope and comfort of my age; but I am resolved I will turn her out o' doors; she shall beg, and starve, and rot in the streets. Not one hapeny, not a hapeny shall she ever hae o' mine. The son of a bitch was always good at finding a hare sitting, an be rotted to'n: I little thought what puss he was looking after; but it shall be ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... and quantity of the carcass seems to be as doubtful and as far removed from a satisfactory solution as that of the wool. Desirable breeds blundered upon by long series of groping experiments are often found to be unstable and subject to disease—bots, foot rot, blind staggers, etc.—causing infinite trouble, both among breeders and manufacturers. Would it not be well, therefore, for some one to go back as far as possible ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... and struck on an elbow of one of his stocky arms. The force of the fall not only broke the trunk in two, but badly shattered it. The damage to the log was so general that the sawmill-man said it would not pay to saw it into lumber and that it could rot ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... can't get away with it. Not for a minute, you can't. You think I'm such a mark as that? Come down here and work like a dog to get the plane ready to fly, and then kiss yuh good-bye and watch yuh go off with it—and leave me here to rot with the snakes and lizards? Oh, no! I'll take the ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... cried, bitterly; "they have hidden me under mountains. I shall be here till I rot. Why the blazes should it matter to them whether I am ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... time as we all did, that a fine crop of flax might have been grown that first year. Dakota taught us that. But the farmer of old was inured to waiting—and so we waited until another spring for the sod to rot, and in the meantime, it grew great crops of tumble-weeds, which in the fall raced over the plain like scurrying scared wolves, piling up in brown mountains against every obstacle, and in every hole. If we had only known these simple things, what would it have saved us! But skill ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... nothing clear Their not caring to think at all There is no step backward in life They have their thinking done for them They may know how to make themselves happy in their climate Thirst for the haranguing of crowds Too many time-servers rot the State We are chiefly led by hope Welcomed and lured on an adversary to wild outhitting What ninnies call Nature ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger

... Nature, and even in the world of thought there are years of famine and years of plenty. Dry rot gets into letters; things are ripe for a revolution; the tinder is dry, and along comes some Martin Luther and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... see useless pieces of flesh and bone slapping nature in the face and not getting more than a mild little slap in return, and then when I see the biggest, most useful man I have ever known paying as a penalty his life's work—oh Lord—that's rot! I have some hymn singing ancestors myself, and they left me a tendency to want to believe in something or other, so I had fine notions about the economy of nature—poetry of science. But this makes rather a joke of that, too—don't you think?" He paused, and Georgia could see the hot beating ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... shape; that the Bank of England had plenty to spare, and it was well for the lightning to strike where the balances were heavy. The bank would never miss the money, and he firmly believed the whole directorate of the fossil institution was permeated with the dry rot of centuries. The managers were convinced that their banking system was impregnable, and, as a consequence, it would fall an easy victim, provided, as we suspected, the bank was really ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... in any degree to solve it. If Job's misery was an ordeal, all unmerited suffering cannot be pressed into the same convenient category. His individual privations and pains may have been compensated for by subsequent plenty and prosperity; but there are other just men who rot on the dunghill and die in despair. The author, therefore, wisely refrained from drawing on the legend more extensively than was absolutely needful for the materials of his poem, and from thus reducing a universal problem to the dimensions of ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... the scene before the murder, Macbeth had said he could not kill Duncan when he saw his boots upon the landing. Lady Macbeth put a stop to her husband's hesitation by whipping him up under her arm, and carrying him off the stage, kicking and screaming. Ernest laughed till he cried. "What rot Shakespeare is after this," he exclaimed, involuntarily. I remembered his essay on the Greek tragedians, and was more I epris with ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... braved, His whizzing water-pipe he waved; "Whitford and Mitford, ply your pumps, You, Clutterbuck, come, stir your stumps, Why are you in such doleful dumps? A fireman, and afraid of bumps!— What are they fear'd on? fools: 'od rot 'em!" Were the last words ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... dying cattle in every pasture from the falls to the river, while these in sight aren't able to keep out of the stench of those that croaked between here and the ford. Oh, this shipping is a fine thing—for the railroads. Here I've got to rot all summer with these cattle, just because two of my trains went into the ditch while no other foreman had over one wrecked. And mind you, they paid the freight in advance, and now King and Kennedy have brought ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... irrelevant. I read it—a very rare thing for me with a French novel (in fact I can hardly recollect another instance, except, a quaint contrast, Paul de Kock's Andre le Savoyard)—first in English, and at a very early period of life, and I then thought it nearly as great "rot" as I have always thought its predecessor. But though I had, I hope, sense enough to see its faults, I had neither age nor experience nor literature enough to appreciate its merits. I read it a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... he chose her, He didn't suppose her A philatelist, always agape For novelties, yet She had all of the set Of triangular stamps of the Cape. Some people malicious Proclaimed her Mauritius One-penny vermilion a sell. But that was all rot. It Was true she had got it, And the tuppenny blue one ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... old fool! Did you ever hear of a ghost bleedin' before!" The speaker threw back his head and laughed. "That's all rot! Besides, I don't believe in ghosts—never did. But as Miss Henderson's farmin' the very land where old Watson was done in, I thought she'd like to have the true story and first hand. And there's no one but me knows it—not first hand. So ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Admitted that there was no earthly chance of the pater giving his consent or anything like it; she needn't in any case have made a damned spectacle of the affair. But that's just like her. Probably did it all because she wanted to be dramatic or some rot." ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... subjects as had seceded from the Established Church to hold conventicles in barns and breweries and backshops in London were hunted by him with bishops' pursuivants and other beagles like vilest criminals, thrown into prison to rot, or suffered to escape from their Fatherland into the trans-Atlantic wilderness, there to battle with wild beasts and savages, and to die without knowing themselves the fathers of a more powerful United States than the Dutch Republic, where ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... "We figured that. It's the shell of a compost pit for the hotel that's goin' to be built around here. They'll sink it in the ground and dump garbage in it, and it'll rot, and then it'll be fertilizer. These critters from space are just using it to hold us. But what are ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... was looking for you. That car, the one they use out west in Calfrancisco, Francifornia, no, I mean Calfris—rot! out west, ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... rotten, and would not dry when she had washed them. It was no better than the Crow's Nest—and there was much less room. She looked forward to the new house that was to be built. It should be a real house, with a red roof glistening in the sun, and an iron sink that would not rot away. ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo

... dashed me still further; and indeed my plight on that third morning was truly pitiful. My clothes were beginning to rot; my stockings in particular were quite worn through, so that my shanks went naked; my hands had grown quite soft with the continual soaking; my throat was very sore, my strength had much abated, and my heart so turned against ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... considerable time. They do not indeed require aromatic herbs, but will eat a small quantity of them with great relish, and are particularly fond of the plant called musk; they seem to resemble sheep in this, that if their pastures be too succulent, they are very subject to the rot; to prevent which, I always made bread their principal nourishment; and, filling a pan with it cut into small squares, placed it every evening in their chambers, for they feed only at evening and in the night; ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... thing that could boast of considerable antiquity, the dry-rot having eaten out its eyes and gnawed away the tip of its tail; and it must have stood long exposed to the atmosphere, for a kind of gray moss had partially overspread its tarnished gilt surface, and a swallow, ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Scout means," said Scout-master Wagstaff, "is no rotting about and all that sort of rot. Jolly well keep yourselves fit, and then, when the time comes, we'll give these Russian and German blighters about the biggest hiding they've ever heard of. Follow the idea? Very well, then. Mind you don't go ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... of the bear was considered to be of too much value to be left to rot, so that next morning a fresh start was made as before, and in due time the place was reached where the roughly-built fireplace stood up blackened against the grey stones. But the bear lay out of sight ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... this nailed shut." There was the sound of an effort of some kind going on as she talked. "Though I ought to let you stay out there and rot. Damn it ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... you suppose I am going to rot upon the wet straw? You insult me. Arsene Lupin remains in prison just as long as it pleases him, ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... either to solace his departure from the world, or to render him insensible. But his end was speedy. Next morning the guard found him dead, with six empty bottles out of the case. His body was denied the rites of sepulture. It was left lying in chains as he perished, to rot in the sun and be devoured by the insects ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... continent. Bass surveyed something like six hundred miles of the Australian coast in a whaleboat with a crew of six men! And one cannot summarise Flinders' work in the Norfolk and in the Investigator before the old ship was condemned and converted into a hulk to rot in Sydney Harbour. ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke

... Carlton cum Willingham in Cambridgeshire to Sir Thomas Elliot and his wife is enrolled in the Exchequer (Originalia, 32 Hen. VIII., pars 3. rot. 22. vel 221.); and amongst the Inquisitions filed in that Court is one taken after his death (Cant. and Hunt., 37 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... Your factors, grieves, trustees, and bailies, I canna' say but they do gaylies; They lay aside a' tender mercies, An' tirl the hallions to the birses; Yet while they're only poind't and herriet, They'll keep their stubborn Highland spirit; But smash them! crash them a' to spails! An' rot the dyvors i' the jails! The young dogs, swinge them to the labour; Let wark an' hunger mak' them sober! The hizzies, if they're aughtlins fawsont, Let them in Drury-lane be lesson'd! An' if the wives an' dirty brats E'en thigger at your doors an' yetts, Flaffan wi' duds an' grey wi' beas', ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... her. Only one child of her first marriage was left; and on the 10th of March 1554, men—not God—took that dearly-prized darling from her. The custody of the person and marriage of Arthur Basset was granted to James Basset, his Popish uncle [Rot. Parl., 1 Mary, part 7]. This is sufficient to indicate that the Roman proclivities of Mr Monke and Lady Frances were at least doubtful. The double death—of the Queen and James Basset—freed Arthur; and by dint of ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... town, if its inmates Did not all take pride in preserving, renewing, improving, As we are taught by the age, and by the wisdom of strangers? Man is not born to spring out of the ground, just like a mere mushroom, And to rot away soon in the very place that produced him! Leaving behind him no trace of what he has done in his lifetime. One can judge by the look of a house of the taste of its master, As on ent'ring a town, one can judge ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... trouble you!—um—um ... "opposite absurdities"—"subjective modifications" ... "ultimate scientific ideas, then, are all representative of ideas that cannot be comprehended." I could have told him that. What bally rot this Philosophy is—but I suppose I must peg away at it. Didn't she say she was sorry I didn't go in more for cultivating my mind? (He looks up.) Jove, here she comes! and yes, there's that beggar CULCHARD with her! I thought he'd—how the dickens did he manage to—? I see ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various

... cotton crops of America; their destiny may be said, without any kind of hyperbole, to hang upon a thread. Should any dire calamity befall the land of cotton, a thousand of our merchant ships would rot idly in dock; ten thousand mills must stop their busy looms; two thousand thousand mouths would starve, for lack of food ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... Skinner. It was bad enough when we had the moon, but it will be ten times worse now. As to the heat, that is all rot. We travelled in the daytime coming up by the banks of the Nile, and it is cooler now than it was then. It is all very well for men to march at night if they have no animals or baggage-train with them, but it is a different thing altogether ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... calmly, "absolute rot. There has never been a good deed done in His name; just the Inquisition and the what-do-you-call-'ems in Russia. Oh, yes, pogroms—and wars and robbing people. Christianity is just a name; there isn't any such thing. And most of the professional Christians that I've seen are damn fools. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... up in a car the bodies of the slain, and let the attendant quickly bear out the carcases. Justly shall they lack the last rites; they are unworthy to be covered with a mound; let no funeral procession or pyre suffer them the holy honour of a barrow; let them be scattered to rot in the fields, to be consumed by the beaks of birds; let them taint the country all about with ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... sinful to kill and eat animals, it was not less sinful to do the like by vegetables, or their seeds. None such, he said, should be eaten, save what had died a natural death, such as fruit that was lying on the ground and about to rot, or cabbage-leaves that had turned yellow in late autumn. These and other like garbage he declared to be the only food that might be eaten with a clear conscience. Even so the eater must plant the pips of any apples or pears that he may have eaten, or any plum- stones, cherry-stones, and ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... the only respectable members of Chinde society. They came over the side with the gratitude of sailors whom the Kanzlar might have picked up from a desert island, where they had been marooned and left to rot. They observed the gilded glory of the Kanzlar smoking-room, its mirrors and marble-topped tables, with the satisfaction and awe of the California miner, who found all the elegance of civilization in the red plush of a Broadway omnibus. The boy-commander of the gunboat gazed ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... struck Denovalin, since he Had falsely testified against the Queen! Then let the executioner strip off His arms, and hang them in my armory, So that the sun shall shine thereon. The corpse Shall he bind to a horse's tail, and drag It o'er the common land and let it rot! ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... Do you mean to tell me that a fellow like you can't earn enough to support himself? If you do, you're talking rot." ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... is toward the rear. Where I shall stand and stop the rot Lord only knows; and now I hear Your forward pace is none too hot; Indeed, with BYNG upon the burst, If at this rate I make for home, I doubt not who will get there first, I to the Rhine, or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various

... feels tender when pinched; if too old, on being pinched it wrinkles up, and so remains. In young mutton, the fat readily separates; in old, it is held together by strings of skin. In sheep diseased of the rot, the flesh is very pale-coloured, the fat inclining to yellow; the meat appears loose from the bone, and, if squeezed, drops of water ooze out from the grains; after cooking, the meat drops clean away from the bones. Wether mutton ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... fifty heroes, pushing and straining and growing red in the face without making the Argo start an inch. At last, quite wearied out, they sat themselves down on the shore, exceedingly disconsolate and thinking that the vessel must be left to rot and fall in pieces and that they must either swim across the sea or lose ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... was a case in Northamptonshire of a different type that seems to have made the most lasting impression on Stearne. Cherrie of Thrapston, "a very aged man," had in a quarrel uttered the wish that his neighbor's tongue might rot out. The neighbor thereupon suffered from something which we should probably call cancer of the tongue. Perhaps as yet the possibilities of suggestion have not been so far sounded that we can absolutely discredit the ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... the child done to you?' cried one. 'Are the sticks to lie here and rot, or be a welcome booty for the Swedes? Pray, how much could a child like that carry away? Does not the whole forest belong to us Freibergers, and shall not our own children pick up a basketful of sticks while we are slaving here without pay? Give ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... companions, because hypocrisy cannot be reckoned among their sins. It is a false hope. Free thinking, free living brother, if I saw you about to put to sea in a ship which I knew to be affected with dry-rot in the timbers of the bottom, I would warn you with all my energy, that I might save your life: when I see you preparing to launch into eternity leaning on a lie, I cry vehemently, Beware, lest you be lost for ever! Without holiness ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... You will blockade us! Do you suppose we shall do nothing, even upon the sea? How many letters of marque and reprisal would it take to put the whole of your ships up at your wharves to rot? Will any merchant at Havre, or Liverpool, or any other portion of the habitable globe, ship a cargo upon a New England, or New York, or Philadelphia clipper, or other ship, when he knows that the seas are swarming with letters ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... around in the corner of the room waiting for me to go out. They ain't men, Pierre. They're wolves in the skins of men. They're the right sons of their mother. When I go out they'll grab the coin I've saved up, and leave me to lie here and rot, maybe. ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... "There do thou rot upon the fruitful earth; no longer shalt thou, at least, live to be the evil bane of mortals that eat the fruit of the fertile soil, and hither shall bring perfect hecatombs. Surely from thee neither shall Typhoeus, ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... opposite. When old Wickamote or some one had landed him, or all of us, with some dashed punishment, and we were gassing about it, used to screw up his nut in the same way and say, 'Yes, but I see what he means.' And some one would say, 'Well, what does he mean, you ass?' and he'd start gassing some rot till some one said, 'Good lord, fancy sticking up for a master!' And old Puzzlehead would say, 'You sickening fool, I'm not sticking up for him. I'm only saying he's right from how he looks at it and it's no good saying he's wrong.'... ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... annual rental of "40,000 golden pieces," was despatched by the hands of common soldiers, without pity, or time, or hesitation. A few followers watching their creaghts or herds, farther up the valley, found his bleeding trunk flung out upon the highway; the head was transported over seas, to rot upon ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee



Words linked to "Rot" :   gangrene, dry-rot, deteriorate, bullshit, buncombe, ring rot, hogwash, soft rot, molder, decay, dry rot, sheep rot, drop, root rot, brown root rot fungus, biological science, brown rot, rotting, bottom rot fungus, crap, garbage, putrescence, biology, bottom rot, bull, decompose, liver rot, rot-resistant, hang, ring rot fungus, degenerate, guff, horseshit, jungle rot, black rot, moulder, bunk, biodegrade, sclerotium rot, putridness, foot rot, Irish bull, rottenness, corruption, devolve, waste, sphacelate, brown rot gummosis, putrefaction



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