The Collaborative International Dictionary
Molder \Mold"er\, Moulder \Mould"er\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Molderedor Mouldered; p. pr. & vb. n. Moldering or Mouldering.] [From Mold fine soft earth: cf. Prov. G. multern.] To crumble into small particles; to turn to dust by natural decay; to lose form, or waste away, by a gradual separation of the component particles, without the presence of water; to crumble away.
The moldering of earth in frosts and sun.
--Bacon.
When statues molder, and when arches fall.
--Prior.
If he had sat still, the enemy's army would have
moldered to nothing.
--Clarendon.
Wiktionary
vb. (en-past of: moulder)
WordNet
adj. slowly broken down or crumbled into dust; "layers of moldered leaves" [syn: moldered]
Usage examples of "mouldered".
Close by he found three or four more, intertangled and superimposed as if the unhappy beings had fallen partly across each other, and in that position had mouldered away leaving nothing but their outline.
The earth on which he walked, the black earth, leaving phosphoric footmarks behind him, was composed of the mouldered bodies of millions of men who had passed away in the centuries during which the city existed.
The bones of tiny animals mouldered within, or birds preserved in brine.
The antechamber beyond lay heaped with broken furnishings and the mouldered skeleton of a cat.
Waves combed vacant beaches, and the crabbed, uprooted apple trees of Telshire mouldered like arthritic skeletons in dusty beds of soil.
I hit wood and it offered minimal resistance, splintering into mouldered pieces, my speed taking me through too fast so that I only just missed the waterless fountain on the other side.
A chandelier crashed to the floor, followed by another, this second one demolishing a macabre tableau of mouldered corpses that had taken silent tea for the last three years in a discreet corner of the room.
Beautifully wrought daggers lay in one corner, and what looked like armour of some kind in another — all fallen from the mouldered chests and boxes, or possibly burst out of these when they were thrown down the shaft so long long ago.
He saw the graves of the hills, where forgotten skeletons mouldered into dust, and lost tombs whose corpses lay unquiet and imprisoned, and their rotted eyes burned with blue flames as they writhed to return his stare.