ROTTING • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Rotting

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/rˈɑtɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Rot v. t.

To make putrid; to cause to be wholly or partially decomposed by natural processes; as, to rot vegetable fiber.

To expose, as flax, to a process of maceration, etc., for the purpose of separating the fiber; to ret.

Rot v. i. (past & past part. rotted; pres. part. rotting)

To undergo a process common to organic substances by which they lose the cohesion of their parts and pass through certain chemical changes, giving off usually in some stages of the process more or less offensive odors; to become decomposed by a natural process; to putrefy; to decay. "Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot, To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot."

Figuratively: To perish slowly; to decay; to die; to become corrupt. "Four of the sufferers were left to rot in irons." "Rot, poor bachelor, in your club."

Synonyms: To putrefy; corrupt; decay; spoil.

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Etymology of 'Rotting'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Rotting" Quotes from Famous Books

... delicate, deep respect for the poor', which could be seen in his manner and his talk among the cottagers. He could be severe enough when severity was needed, as when he compelled a cruel farmer to kill 'a miserable horse which was rotting alive in front of his house'; and he could deal no less drastically with hypocrisy. When a professional beggar fell on his knees at the Rectory gate and pretended to pray, he was at once ejected by the Rector with ...

— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the country-side, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year. Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation—sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the ...

— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

... will listen!" Selingman interrupted. "You two—what was it the Oracle called you both—the world's deliverers. Put your heads together and decide how you are going to do it. The people over here, Max, are rotting in their kennels. Sink-holes they live in. Live! What ...

— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... and now, ahead of them, they saw what must be the end of this last and deepest of all the tunnels. This end showed as a glare of light. Real light, not the soft gleam of the rotting wood walls which was already paling feebly in comparison. The glare ahead of them, indeed, had something of the texture of electric light. Neither Jim nor Dennis could repress a sudden start; it was like coming abruptly onto a man-made fact, a ...

— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... looked down a cove not quite as steep as the rest of the cliff, yet as nearly perpendicular as any surface on which trees and bushes can take hold. It was clothed with a thick growth of sere weeds, cut by one hint of a diagonal line. Perhaps laborers at a fulling mill now rotting below had once climbed this rock. Rain had carried the earth from above in small cataracts down its face, making a thin alluvial coating. A strip of land separated the rock from the St. Lawrence, which looked wide and gray ...

— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

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