Crossword clues for mothball
mothball
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
mothball \moth"ball`\ n. A small sphere of camphor or naphthalene used to keep moths away from stored clothing.
Syn: camphor ball.
mothball \moth"ball`\ v. t. To put into long-term storage; as, to mothball the battleships not needed after the war.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1902 in a literal sense (to store away with mothballs), from mothball (n.); figurative sense from 1901.
Wiktionary
n. a small ball of chemical pesticide and deodorant placed in or around clothing and other articles susceptible to damage from mold or moth larvae in order to protect them from this damage; mothballs have either naphthalene or paradichlorobenzene as their active ingredient. vb. 1 (context transitive English) to store or shelve (something that is no longer used) 2 (cx transitive English) to stop using something, but keep in good condition
WordNet
n. a small sphere of camphor or naphthalene used to keep moths away from stored clothing [syn: camphor ball]
v. put into long-term storage
Wikipedia
Mothballs are small balls of chemical pesticide and deodorant, sometimes used when storing clothing and other articles susceptible to damage from mold or moth larvae (especially clothes moths like Tineola bisselliella).
Use of mothballs when clothing is stored out-of-season has given rise to the colloquial usage of the terms "mothballed" and "put into mothballs", to refer to anything which is put into storage or whose operation is suspended.
Usage examples of "mothball".
Something off Mothball Row that would have to be flown to Barathrum and torn .
By the end of the day he had sold 80 percent of the merchandise: broken pots, worn galoshes, balls of tinfoil left over from a World War II scrap drive, odd lots of spare parts for obsolete machines, mothballed clothing, chipped bric-a-brac, a brass lamp in the shape of a pregnant alligator.
The corridors are wallpapered with an exquisitely disgusting floral print and the whole place smells of mothballs, the only symptom of the twenty-first century being a cheap and nasty webcam on the hall staircase.
Others were fifty-year-old crimson-red diplomatic cruisers, and warships recently recommissioned from mothballed fleets.
He had a single air-tank rig on with a full facemask, because, below the main deck, the mothballed battlewagon had been backfilled with nitrogen gas to displace all the oxygen.
The directorate maintains it in the leading Earth--Sun Lagrangian point with the rest of the mothball fleet.
I remember it because Wisconsin had been the last one of the battlewagons to be reactivated, and yet it was the first one to go back into mothballs after Desert Storm.
One of the mothballed heavy cruisers over in the west yard had settled right to the bottom over the period of a month, flooding out the opened steam turbines and eight boilers left opened under a dry layup.
It was so near that an odour came off it -- like the odour of cachous from old evening bags, of yellowing dance-programmes, of fox-fur long laid in mothballs.
Others were fifty-year-old crimson-red diplomatic cruisers, and warships recently recommissioned from mothballed fleets.
One in the Apps had contained several mothballed war wags on which the Trader had based his whole operation.
Jeremy avoids studying it too closely lest he discover that the mothballs have not worked.
Indeed, some defense savings had been effected by demobilizing units and mothballing ships and planes.
Each had survived many distinguished twentieth-century missions, more than three quarters of a century lying in mothballs in Florida, rededication in the names of heroes of the socialist revolution, and a three-hundred-million kilometer trip to the asteroid belt.
The latter were enclosed in garment bags, and a strong smell of mothballs wafted out as Julie began opening them.