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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
decrepit
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
decrepit wooden benches
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ He moved fiercely among the decrepit houses in his white pyjamas like an angry prophet.
▪ He was in his forties, wore a decrepit old blazer and flannels, and had rabbity teeth and a foolish expression.
▪ In the windows of the decrepit houses, gas lamps were beginning to be lighted.
▪ One by one, the aged tottered in, each one seemingly more decrepit than the one before.
▪ Our battered forecabin now looked like the canopy of some decrepit truck jacked up for repairs in some Third World country.
▪ Past the overgrown lawn, through the decrepit rose arbour and into the Wilderness.
▪ The inn-hospital is a decrepit, single-storied structure.
▪ The latter set about restoring its decrepit but largely unaltered state, uncovering the great stone fireplace in the hall.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Decrepit

Decrepit \De*crep"it\, a. [L. decrepitus, perhaps orig., noised out, noiseless, applied to old people, who creep about quietly; de- + crepare to make a noise, rattle: cf. F. d['e]cr['e]pit. See Crepitate.] Broken down with age; wasted and enfeebled by the infirmities of old age; feeble; worn out. ``Beggary or decrepit age.''
--Milton.

Already decrepit with premature old age.
--Motley.

Note: Sometimes incorrectly written decrepid.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
decrepit

mid-15c., from Middle French décrépit (15c.), from Latin decrepitus "very old, infirm," from de- "down" (see de-) + *crepitus, past participle of crepare "to crack, break" (see raven).

Wiktionary
decrepit

a. Weakened or worn out from age or wear

WordNet
decrepit
  1. adj. worn and broken down by hard use; "a creaky shack"; "a decrepit bus...its seats held together with friction tape"; "a flea-bitten sofa"; "a run-down neighborhood"; "a woebegone old shack" [syn: creaky, flea-bitten, run-down, woebegone]

  2. lacking physical strength or vitality; "a feeble old woman"; "her body looked sapless" [syn: debile, feeble, infirm, sapless, weak, weakly]

Usage examples of "decrepit".

Spanish moss from the pillared veranda of an antebellum mansion by an imposing liveried black, the sun gleaming on the strong lineaments of his brow arching disdainfully as a decrepit horse and buggy bearing an aging woman and a handsome intense young man standing to snap his whip imperiously came close for an exchange of unheard words to be pointed scornfully on their way, glimpsed from behind a curtain by a ravishingly beautiful young woman in negligee in their retreat back down the drive.

They was a decrepit punching bag, a horizontal bar and a lot of bar-bells, dumb-bells, kettle bells--in fact, all the lifting weights you couldst imagine.

Daru withdrew his decrepit handkerchief and mopped his forehead, three quick dabs that seemed to leave the silk cloth sodden with sweat.

The yard was as shaggy as he remembered it, with the same old locust trees more decrepit than ever with dieback, dropping branches on the yard.

The manse was now grown as decrepit as its final resident, who lived alone except for a single house servant and a greensman whose sole duty was to keep open a tunnel through what had once been a garden but was now long since given over to vegetative rampage.

The house tops over which I skimmed became dingier, grimier and more decrepit.

Wesley Karpas had in mind when he changed his name to Carp and sought to rise in society, this decrepit and rundown house, this money-sucking semifailure of a son.

A half hour later he pulled into the driveway of a decrepit house on a side street south of Kingwood, temporarily rented for just such an occasion.

He had commissioned three different construction firms to demolish the decrepit eighteenth-century mansion that had formerly occupied the lakefront property and had Derabend Hall built to his own exact specifications.

He sold a decrepit whale-boat, as good as new what of the fresh white paint, to a Marquesan chief.

The springs of his decrepit Morris Minor, the one he called Micawber, complained as he eased it over humps and hollows.

The decrepit row houses were supposed to be offset by impressive walls and archways that mirrored preinvasion architecture.

Speechless with astonishment and horror and revulsion, I stared at the Shahrpiryar Shams, the wrinkled, balding, mottled, shrunken, moldy, decrepit, unspeakably old grandmother.

Scenes of mayhem from Londonderry to Chandigarh, an overweight family rowing down main street in a freak flood in Ohio, a molasses truck overturned on the Jersey Turnpike, gunfire, stabbings, flaming police cars and blazing ambulances celebrating a league basketball championship in Detroit interspersed with a decrepit grinning couple on a bed that warped and heaved at the touch of a button because they offered him a settlement Harry, almost a quarter million dollars but of course he insists on going ahead with the case or rather Mister Basic does, he was out here for.

But Comus had lived too thoroughly in the centre of things to regard life in a backwater as anything else than stagnation, and stagnation while one is young he justly regarded as an offence against nature and reason, in keeping with the perverted mockery that sends decrepit invalids touring painfully about the world and shuts panthers up in narrow cages.