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. (present participle of moulder English)
WordNet
adj. becoming rotten; "a field covered with thousands of decomposing bodies"; "John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave" [syn: decomposing, moldering]
Usage examples of "mouldering".
Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome.
Thou that heardst the trackless dead, In the mouldering tomb must lie, Mortal!
And laughed, in joy, the fiendish throng, Mixed with ghosts of the mouldering dead: And their grisly wings, as they floated along, Whistled in murmurs dread.
Thus the Count was made welcome, and the very next day a lugubrious priest with an enormously long nose was instructed to lead the Count northwards to the Villa Lupighi which stood mouldering on a steep bare hill above the coast.
In back of it was a mouldering wooden door that yielded with loud and reluctant creakings when Jagun prized it open with a fire poker.
In a mouldering chest we chanced some days ago to find a scroll that was near illegible.
December looked through the painted windows on mouldering embers and flickering lamps, the vaulted roof was echoing to a mellifluous concert of noses, from the clarionet of the waiting-boy at one end of the hall, to the double bass of the Reverend Doctor, ringing over the empty punch-bowl, at the other.
The light there was too dim for us to make out anything but walls and heaps of rusting scrap-iron cast away there and mouldering own.
In the shadow of old walls and unsafe towers were a pile of gears, a ramshackle table of broken crockery and crude clay ornaments, a case of mouldering textbooks.
Its walls were held together with the paste from a thousand mouldering posters advertising theological debates and discussions.
Yagharek looked out over a tumbledown roofscape of twisted roofs and mouldering slate, curlicues of brick and forgotten, warped weathervanes.
He had expected rows of mouldering headstones, sunken graves, and cockeyed crosses.
And when the hounds were all curled up on their straw he found a place for Lurulu, a mouldering loft in which were sacks and a few heaps of hay: from a pigeon-loft just beyond it some of the pigeons had strayed, and dwelt all along the rafters.
But the troll in the mouldering loft sat long on his bundle of hay observing the ways of time.
The decay of the boards in the loft, and the moss outside in the mortar, and old lumber mouldering away, all seemed to tell the same story.