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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
moult
verb
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As they grow they moult several times.
▪ By August the male will have begun to moult and will become almost indistinguishable from the female.
▪ No, he had been moulting, like a bird.
▪ One day she carried a tall moulting sunflower into the Staff Room.
▪ Periodically, they moult their thin transparent skins, changing shape as they do so.
▪ The dragonfly nymphs may take up to 2 years before they moult into the adult form.
▪ The larva moults to give rise to the four-legged nymph, which, after five more days, becomes the adult mite.
▪ You can not but feel that Aisling O'Sullivan, moulting magnificently like a sick eagle, is having a high old time.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
moult

Molt \Molt\, Moult \Moult\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Molted or Moulted; p. pr. & vb. n. Molting or Moulting.] [OE. mouten, L. mutare. See Mew to molt, and cf. Mute, v. t.] [The prevalent spelling is, perhaps, moult; but as the u has not been inserted in the otherwords of this class, as, bolt, colt, dolt, etc., it is desirable to complete the analogy by the spelling molt.] To shed or cast the hair, feathers, skin, horns, or the like, as an animal or a bird.
--Bacon.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
moult

see molt.

Wiktionary
moult

n. 1 The process of shedding or losing a covering of fur, feathers or skin etc. 2 The skin or feathers cast off during the process of moulting. vb. 1 (context intransitive English) To shed or lose a covering of hair or fur, feathers, skin, horns, etc, and replace it with a fresh one. 2 (context transitive English) To shed in such a manner.

WordNet
moult
  1. n. periodic shedding of the cuticle in arthropods or the outer skin in reptiles [syn: molt, molting, moulting, ecdysis]

  2. v. cast off hair, skin, horn, or feathers; "out dog sheds every Spring" [syn: shed, molt, exuviate, slough]

Wikipedia
Moult (disambiguation)

Moult or molt (see spelling differences) may have several meanings:

  • Moulting, the manner in which an animal routinely casts off a part of its body (often, but not always, an outer layer or covering)
    • Ecdysis, the shedding of the exoskeleton in arthropods and other invertebrates
  • Exuvia, the old skeleton shed during ecdysis
  • Moult, Calvados, a French town

Usage examples of "moult".

St Michel et plusieurs anges lui avoient baille une Couronne moult riche pour lui.

Rhode Island Reds, and so escaping that fatal early fall laying with its attendant moult and eggless interim until March!

This mightie big stone sharpe topt, sliding downe the extream part from corner to corner, flat sided by the Diameter, was fower paces, at euery equall distant corner, whereof was the foote of a harpie of moulten mettall, their steales and clawes armed.

Aboue in this great Court paued as aforesayd, in the passage towardes the Porche, some tenne paces, I beheld a prodigious winged vaughting horse, of moulten brasse, of an exceeding bignesse, his wings fanning out.

The breeze blowing through it would catch the wisps and send them dancing in the air, while the great generous streams of golden grain flowing from the machine seemed like rivers of moulten metal.

And Blore roared like a bull for Moult to get out before one of them did him over.

This mightie big stone sharpe topt, sliding downe the extream part from corner to corner, flat sided by the Diameter, was fower paces, at euery equall distant corner, whereof was the foote of a harpie of moulten mettall, their steales and clawes armed.

Using their own discarded skins from moulting, along with fine waxy threads, they construct little domelike shells, or scales, under which they carry on as unobtrusively as possible, often blending in with the plant.

All speak of the crowds who've passed this way, discarding these metal carapaces like tenderbodied crabs on the floors of seas, moulting off their past anatomies.

I noticed it first when we were lying in the wholly sunless estuary of the River Plate, having sent the tender over that vast and as far as I could see birdless waste to Buenos Aires, carrying among other burdens a message to you in which I pointed out the extraordinary contrast between your African water, teeming with both familiar and wildly exotic duck, geese, anhingas, waders from the most minute of stints to Ardea goliath, and this prodigious desert, inhabited perhaps to the extreme limit of my glass by one moulting black-crested grebe.

After moulting twice, they drop to the ground and hide in leaf litter.

We never heard that expression again until after the cyclone when he proclaimed a new amnesty for political prisoners and authorized the return of all exiles except men of letters, of course, them never, he said, they've got fever in their quills like thoroughbred roosters when they're moulting so that they're no good for anything except when they're good for something, he said, worse than politicians, worse than priests, just imagine, but let the others come back without distinction of color so that the rebuilding of the nation can be the task of all, so that nobody would be left without proof that he was once more the master of all his power with the fierce support of armed forces .

Tiny arid flakes moulted from the roof, resembling a sleet of miniature autumn leaves as they scattered over the grass below.

The nulltherm foam coating its girders and tanks crisped to black and moulted away.

She was a huge beast, newly moulted, for her chintyl armoured covering was a lustrous coppery colour and the long hairs that covered her abdomen and legs were burnished like newly spun gold wire.