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Dilapidated   /dəlˈæpədˌeɪtɪd/   Listen
Dilapidated

adjective
1.
In deplorable condition.  Synonyms: bedraggled, broken-down, derelict, ramshackle, tatterdemalion, tumble-down.  "A broken-down fence" , "A ramshackle old pier" , "A tumble-down shack"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Dilapidated" Quotes from Famous Books



... of fashion there was one retired spot less widely known than Fox Hall or the Mulberry Garden, but which possessed a certain repute, and was affected rather by the exclusives than by the crowd. It was a dilapidated building of immemorial age, known as the "haunted Abbey," being, in fact, the refectory of a Cistercian monastery, of which all other remains had disappeared long ago. The Abbey had flourished in the lifetime of Sir Thomas More, and was mentioned in some of his familiar ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the dilapidated tavern in the decaying mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up, and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... beauty was a delusion. When John Osgood's small boat swept up the sands on the white crest of a league-long roller, how different was the scene! He saw a group of dilapidated huts, a tavern called The Angel's Rest, a blackfellow's hut, and the bareness of three Government offices, all built on piles, that the white ants should not humble them suddenly to the dust; a fever-making ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... cracked and groaned under their feet, as if complaining of their weight, and threatening to precipitate them to the regions below. Opening the door of a little box of a room, out of which the hot air came rushing like a blast from a furnace fire, the porter placed the lamp upon a dilapidated wash-stand and the valise upon the floor, and without uttering a word, ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... hall from the back in front of the large central arch; it is raised ten feet above the floor, and is about ten feet wide, and covered by a marble canopy, all beautifully inlaid with mosaic work exquisitely finished, but now much dilapidated. The room or recess in which the throne stands is open to the front, and about fifteen feet wide and six deep. There is a door at the back by which the Emperor entered from his private apartments, and one on his left, from which his prime minister or chief officer of state ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... dilapidated; a missing detail serving as a hallmark to calm doubts; others insist upon completeness to the eye and solidity for use; while the connoisseur, with unlimited means, recognises nothing less than signed sofas and chairs, ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... their new home. On arriving at Roanoke, on the 22d of July, Governor White, with forty of his best men, went ashore for the purpose of finding the men who had been left there by Grenville. The fort was destroyed, the houses were in a dilapidated condition and no trace of the colonists was found except a single skeleton which lay bleaching in the sun in front of one of the cabins, indicating that some fearful tragedy ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... up the dilapidated steps to the door of No. 236, and was about to seize the dirty iron knocker when the door opened suddenly and a girl came out. She was dressed neatly and wore a pseudo fashionable hat from which a heavy figured veil depended so as almost to hide her features. She was carrying a bulging cane ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... by Baxter had often visited a deserted dwelling on the lake shore, and to this spot the party now directed their steps. In the dark their course was uncertain, and they made slow progress, so it was after three o'clock in the morning when the dilapidated building was reached. ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield

... have not people who walk in their sleep, obedient to the mysterious guidance of dreams, clomb the walls of old ruins, and found footing, even in decrepitude, along the edge of unguarded battlements, and down dilapidated stair-cases deep as draw-wells or coal-pits, and returned with open, fixed, and unseeing eyes, unharmed, to their beds at midnight? It is all the work of the soul, to whom the body is a slave; and shall not the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... that the maiden ladies were taking afternoon tea. There was no sign of hothouse roses or rare exotic plants, but he noticed a beehive, a quaint sundial with an inscription, and along the middle path down which he walked were at intervals little dilapidated busts or figures of stone on pedestals—some of them lacking tips of noses or ears. It did not occur to Mr. Anderson that antiquity rather than poverty was responsible for these ravages. Their ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... passed away. The sun, mounting higher, shone over the dilapidated walls, and fell full on Jo's face. He shielded his eyes with his free hand. The sun beat heavily on his head. Sometimes he thought he heard a rustle in the wild oats, and he cried out for help, but he afterward concluded the sound had been made by ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford

... open, and the paths had been weeded, though Sybil had not allowed the wild shrubbery to be pruned nor the box hedges to be trimmed. She loved the pathless confusion of the old grounds, and most of all she loved the dilapidated summer-house. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... to every fear, and wiped his bleeding nose. The unhappy beast slunk back between the legs of his preserver and followed him out of the room, as Lu, with an expression of maternal despair, bore him away for the correction of his dilapidated raiment and depraved associations. I felt such sincere pride in this young Mazzini of the dog nation that I was vexed at Lu for bestowing on him reproof instead of congratulation; but she was not the ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... one Josenhans, with his wife and their two children, Amrei (Anna Marie) and Damie (Damien). The father was a woodcutter in the forest, and was, moreover, an adept at various kinds of work; the house, which was in a dilapidated state when he bought it, he had himself repaired and reroofed, and in the autumn he was going to whitewash it inside—the lime was already lying prepared in the trench, covered with withered branches. His wife was one of the best ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog-collar—but no dog—the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... through the South and you will be struck with the general misfit and dilapidated appearance of things. Palings are missing from the fences, gates sag on single hinges, houses are unpainted, window panes are broken, yards unkempt and the appearance of a squalor greater than the real ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.

... in the sense that it was unfurnished. The unknown was using an electric torch of extraordinary brilliancy, and revealed a dilapidated hall-stand and a musty chair. He took a brief survey ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... profits and to give their blasted fields some rest, are thus pushing off the many who are merely independent.... In traversing that county one will discover numerous farm houses, once the abode of industrious and intelligent freemen, now occupied by slaves, or tenantless, deserted and dilapidated; he will observe fields, once fertile, now unfenced, abandoned, and covered with those evil harbingers fox-tail and broomsedge; he will see the moss growing on the mouldering walls of once thrifty villages; ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... we reached a bridge over a stream called Mud Creek, which was in such a dilapidated condition that all hands had to get out and cover over the biggest ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... the Duck came to a little miserable peasant's hut. This hut was so dilapidated that it did not itself know on which side it should fall; and that's why it remained standing. The storm whistled round the Duckling in such a way that the poor creature was obliged to sit down, to stand against it; and the wind blew worse and worse. Then the Duckling ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... their old haunts are in a more or less dilapidated condition according to the number of successful visits the German aviators have chosen to pay us during the Winter, and I fancy that this upsets them a trifle. For hundreds of generations they have been accustomed to nest in the pinions of certain roofs, to locate in a determined chimney, ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... writers of London. "I spent two days with Tennyson in June," he writes to a literary friend in 1857, "and you take my word for it, he is a noble fellow, every inch of him. He is as tall as I am, with a head which Read capitally calls that of a dilapidated Jove, long black hair, splendid dark eyes, and a full mustache and beard. The portraits don't look a bit like him; they are handsomer, perhaps, but haven't half the splendid character of his face. ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... I may be wrong. Thanks to the dilapidated condition of a lock, I can decide the question, at the first opportunity offered to me by the ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... instant they stood still, but the third looked about him eagerly, to find where they could get under cover. It was not a small farm. Beside the dwelling house and stable and smoke-house, there were long ranges with granaries and storehouses and cattlesheds. But it all looked awfully poor and dilapidated. The houses had gray, moss-grown, leaning walls, which seemed ready to topple over. In the roofs were yawning holes, and the doors hung aslant on broken hinges. It was apparent that no one had taken the trouble ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... had no arms, or had mere stumps ending abruptly in a red and sickening object like a bone which a dog has been chewing. Some had no legs, and were pulled along on little wheeled trolleys by their less dilapidated companions in misfortune. Some had no features. Their faces were mere glabrous disks, from which eyes and nose had completely vanished; only the mouth remained, a toothless gap fringed with straggling hairs. Some had faces abnormally bloated, with powerful foreheads ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... longed, but only lived to realize for four brief months. All the best Field wrote previous to 1890—and it includes the best he ever wrote, except "The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac"—was written in a room to which many a box stall is palatial, and his sole library was a dilapidated edition of Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations," Cruden's "Concordance of the Bible," and a well-thumbed copy of the King James version of the Bible. He detested the revised version. The genius of this man at this time did not depend on scholarship or surroundings, but on the companionship of his ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... through a broad, single pane the early sunlight fell across a wall papered with blue and white flowers. Print dresses hung over the door. On the wall were two pictures—a girl with a basket of flowers, the coloured supplement of an illustrated newspaper, and an old and dilapidated last century print. On the chimney-piece there were photographs of the Gale family in Sunday clothes, and the green vases that Sarah had given Margaret on ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... beforehand—not, the landlord precisely stipulated, to be returned in any event. So off her Excellency rattled in the wind and rain; and great was her triumph when the rain ceased, the wind fell, and the night cleared. She put her head out of the rackety old landau, whose dilapidated hood had formed a shelter by no means water-tight, and cried, "Who was right, driver?" But the driver turned his black cigar between his teeth, answering, "The mischief is done already. ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope

... fresco-painting could be seen on its walls; near this arose a tall, square tower, ivy-clad to its very summit, from whence a flock of hawks were flying in and out; the lightning had so shattered its walls that it threatened every moment to fall, yet in this dilapidated state it had remained for years, and was regarded, therefore, as an 'un-tumbling' curiosity. After some time spent here, which Dexter improved by making a pencil-sketch of the valley and adjacent mountains, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... shut the windows by day, nor omitted our cheerful fire by night. Indoors, the main head-quarters seemed like the camp of some party of young engineers in time of peace, only with a little female society added, and a good many martial associations thrown in. A large, low, dilapidated room, with an immense fireplace, and with window-panes chiefly broken, so that the sashes were still open even when closed,—such was our home. The walls were scrawled with capital charcoal sketches by R. of the Fourth New Hampshire, and with a good map of the island ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... to the Betsey, we passed through a straggling group of cottages on the hill-side, one of which, the most dilapidated and smallest of the number, the minister entered, to visit a poor old woman, who had been bed-ridden for ten years. Scarce ever before had I seen so miserable a hovel. It was hardly larger than the cabin of the Betsey, and a thousand times less comfortable. The ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... must remember that we are double cropping the land and that it must be fed and cared for accordingly. There is absolutely no use in setting an apple orchard, expecting it to take care of itself, "just growing," like Topsy, as numerous dilapidated and broken down orchards bear ample testimony. If orchards are to be cropped this must be judiciously done with the trees primarily ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... colourless term for a human being. All men are guys, being endowed by their Creator with certain ... but I am misled by another association. And a regular guy means, I presume, a reliable or respectable guy. The point here, however, is that the guy in the grotesque English sense does represent the dilapidated remnant of a real human tradition of symbolising real historic ideals by the sacramental mystery of fire. It is a great fall from the lowest of these lowly bonfires to the highest of the modern sky-signs. The new illumination does ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... one small window, before which hung a dilapidated shutter by a rusty hinge. The door opened, Billy knew, into a little passage from which the room door opened, and from which a rickety ladder led up to a loft, unused and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... garden, connected with a large old mansion, between Fenchurch and Church Streets. In this garden was a dilapidated family tomb. It was impressed on her mind that she must go into this tomb to pray. At the dead hour of night she sought this gloomy abode of moldering coffins and scattered bones. As she entered and knelt in the death cell, she trembled with a fear which her prayers ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood

... into the wine-business so disastrously, had been pasteur here. He had preached from this very church whose bells now rang out the mid-day hour. The spirit of her daughter, she firmly believed, still haunted the garden, the narrow passages, and the dilapidated little salon where the ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... into Short Market Street, Mrs. Pendleton's voice trailed off at last into silence, and she did not speak again while they passed hurriedly between the crumbling houses and the dilapidated shops which rose darkly on either side of the narrow cinder-strewn walks. The scent of honeysuckle did not reach here, and when they stopped presently at the beginning of Tin Pot Alley, there floated out to them the sharp acrid odour of huddled negroes. In these ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... morning till late afternoon. The Imperialists ascribed their victory to the intervention of Our Lady. Some fifty years after their defeat the Bohemians erected a church and monastery to St. Mary on the White Mountain. You may see this church, looking somewhat dilapidated—I should say ashamed of itself—as it stands there a monument to ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... old man died, to club life in London, and seldom has been near the old place; indeed, it has been let till recently, and he wants to let it again, but it is altogether too dilapidated for that without repairs. So he came down to see about it, and was taken ill there. But to return to what my father told me. He was shocked to hear of the certificate, for he had implicitly believed his brother's denial of the marriage, and he said ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the materials which he brought in for breakfast) that his grandfather Philip, the convert of George Fox, had suffered much from the persecution to which these harmless devotees were subjected on all sides during that intolerant period, and much of their family estate had been dilapidated. But better days dawned on Joshua's father, who, connecting himself by marriage with a wealthy family of Quakers in Lancashire, engaged successfully in various branches of commerce, and redeemed the remnants of the property, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... had expected to behold a vision of loveliness—the superlative in the scale in which the two elder sisters made positive and comparative, but what she saw was an elf-like figure sitting huddled in the depths of an arm-chair, with tiny hands clasped together, and large dilapidated boots occupying the place of honour in the foreground. Lank tails of hair fell to the shoulders, and while the nose was of the smallest possible dimensions, the mouth seemed to stretch right across the face. It seemed ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... detected by the observant eye for they had a markedly older appearance than the rest. The front-door, similarly, seemed as if it must have been made years before the house, the fact being that the one which Mrs Lucas had found there was too dilapidated to be of the slightest service in keeping out wind or wet or undesired callers. She had therefore caused to be constructed an even older one made from the oak-planks of a dismantled barn, and had it studded with large iron nails of antique pattern made by the village blacksmith. He had arranged ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... had recently fetched from the store, lay scattered upon the floor, together with some rather dilapidated-looking pieces of candy, but aside from this, nothing seemed to have been ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman

... apprehensively. There were no reporters yet in sight, and thankful to have escaped notice I paid for my breakfast and left. At the cab-stand I chose the least dilapidated hansom I could find, and giving the driver the address of the Gilmore residence, in the ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... another interdict hanging over his head (November 12th), the King restored the archiepiscopal lands, the rents had been previously levied, the corn and cattle had been carried off, and the buildings were left in a dilapidated state. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... amplified what Enoch had told us. Thomas Spencer, the half-breed, forwarded full intelligence of the approaching force; Oneida runners brought in stories of its magnitude, with which the forest glades began to be vocal; Colonel Gansevoort, working night and day to put into a proper state of defence the dilapidated fort at the Mohawk's headwaters, sent down urgent demands for supplies, for more men, and for ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... lies," said he testily, and with an uneasy gesture which explained to my mind the dilapidated state of the place. Maurice Gorman was not only a poltroon but a miser, and five hundred pounds were worth more to him ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... colored cloth be set into the seam of the trousers; not sewed on, but into the goods. A large diamond shaped piece or else a square of such cloth was set into the breast and back of the tunic. I preferred my uniform, dilapidated though it was. We were permitted the choice, probably less out of kindness than because ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson

... I went there,—one April day, when the whole landscape was full of color from the budding trees,—and before I could look at the view, I caught sight of some rare vines, already in leaf, about the dilapidated walls of the cabin. Then across the low paling I saw the brilliant colors of tulips and daffodils. There were many rose-bushes; in fact, the whole top of the hill was a flower garden, once well cared for and carefully ordered. It was ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... then handed to a rather dilapidated policeman of a gendarme type, who spat copiously on the floor of the carriage and informed us that we should be shot if we attempted to escape. Having no desire to speak to this fellow, we let down the sleeping shelves of the compartment and, as the train steamed ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... all the productions of art and curious luxury, which the adventurous spirit of man brought from every quarter of the globe to Samarcand and Bagdad. The site of these mighty capitals is almost erased from the map of the modern traveller; but tribute and traffic have also ceased to sustain even the dilapidated serail of the once omnipotent Stamboul, and, until very recently, all that remained of the splendour of the Caliphs of Egypt was the vast Necropolis, which still contains their ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... Yet serious problems persist. Oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80% of exports, leaving the country vulnerable to swings in world prices. Russia's industrial base is increasingly dilapidated and must be replaced or modernized if the country is to maintain vigorous economic growth. Other problems include a weak banking system, a poor business climate that discourages both domestic and foreign ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... other Lazarus. But I never knew that either of them was in the army," glancing at the dilapidated regimentals. ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... landing and took the train bound inland; after leaving the beach the road passes through dense, fragrant orange-groves and rich, fruitful vineyards. A ride of twenty-five miles brought us to Los Angeles, a town with the same beautiful surroundings. It was, at that time, a quaint, old, dilapidated Spanish place, with an air of shabby gentility, but the subsequent tide of immigration and trade has doubtless transformed it. We returned to the coast and took the steamer to San Diego, which, with its arid, sandy waste, has little to recommend it to ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... needed doing up; I see the bored porter in his sheep-skin, the broom, the drifts of snow.... On a boy coming fresh from the provinces and imagining that the temple of science must really be a temple, such gates cannot make a healthy impression. Altogether the dilapidated condition of the University buildings, the gloominess of the corridors, the griminess of the walls, the lack of light, the dejected aspect of the steps, the hat-stands and the benches, take a prominent position among predisposing causes in the history of Russian pessimism.... Here ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... superstitious, and their superstition was cherished by the Church. Even at the present day the Church calls international combat an appeal to God; regimental banners are consecrated by priests, and laid up in temples when dilapidated; and Catholic and Protestant priests alike implore victory for their respective sides in time of war. And why not? Is not the Bible God "the Lord of Hosts" and "a man of war"? Did he not teach David's fingers to fight? Were not Joshua and Jehu, the two greatest tigers in history, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... destroyed all the deeper feelings which they would otherwise naturally be calculated to produce. It is this taste which has created that dreadful and disgusting anomaly in national antiquities, the Musee des Monumens Francois, which has mangled and dilapidated the monuments of the greatest men, and the memorials of the proudest days of France, to produce in Paris a spectacle worthy of the grande nation. It is this same taste, which, in that solemn commemoration of the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... to take Beauvais in my way, in order to pay a visit to Madame la Comtesse de G., living at a chateau about three leagues from that place. She possesses a collection of carved wood, in bas-reliefs, porches, stair-cases, &c. all from a neighbouring dilapidated abbey; and, among other things, one singular piece of sculpture, descriptive of the temptation of St Anthony. He had reason to think that the Countess might be more successfully tempted than was the Saint just ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... unexpectedly easy to carry out, and not ruinously extravagant, either; for our friend the American consul knew the principal director in a tram company, and a dilapidated and discarded car was sent to us in a few days. There were certain moments—once when we saw that it had not been painted for twenty years, once when the freight bill was handed us, and again when we contracted for the removal of ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... off from the rest of the hotel into a sort of private suite, Clare had entered one of the rooms and was bending over a pale, wan shadow of a girl, tossing restlessly on a bed. The room was scantily furnished with a dilapidated bureau in one corner and a rickety washstand equipped with a dirty washbowl and pitcher. A few cheap chromos on the walls were the only decorations, and a small badly soiled rug covered a floor innocent for many ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... sickness, murder during the revolts, and the slaughter in Cebu, the exploring party, now reduced to 100 souls all told, was deemed insufficient to conveniently manage three vessels. It was resolved therefore to burn the most dilapidated one—the Concepcion. At a general council, Juan Caraballo was chosen Commander-in-Chief of the expedition, with Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa as Captain of the Victoria. The royal instructions were read, and it was decided to go to the Island of Borneo, already known to the Portuguese ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... chocolate, and though he frequently remained nearly the whole day without further refreshment, he slept a great deal and thus escaped some of the pain which the jolting of the carriage caused him. His luggage consisted of a small dilapidated trunk, which contained his violin, his jewels, his money, and a few fine linen articles. Besides this he had only a hat-case and a carpet-bag, and frequently a napkin would contain his entire wardrobe. In a small red pocketbook ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... clambered up the porch had been untrimmed of the last year's growth, and sprawled in every direction. The gate hung from one hinge, and many palings were off the fence, and all had a sodden, dingy appearance from the recent rains. The house itself looked so dilapidated and small, in contrast with their stately mansion on Fifth Avenue, that irrepressible tears came into her eyes, as ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... In the large, dilapidated church—which, "one Sunday or another, will crush us all, like so many rats," the hostess said—there were only the two invalids and their party. The sick man and girl had been laid on the floor ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... proved a great assistance in carrying on the work. This was, perhaps, one of the most beautiful and elaborate specimens of the Decorated style in England; and as Mr. Stewart observes, "must have been a perfect storehouse of statuary and elaborate tabernacle work." Even in its present dilapidated state it will amply repay a careful examination. It was dedicated to St. Mary, and after the Reformation, was (in 1566) assigned by the Dean and Chapter for the use of the inhabitants of the parish of Holy Trinity in lieu of their own church then in ruins, ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous

... about four years ago. This lane leads to the termination of the King's Road by the Ship Tavern. The Almshouses were originally built and endowed by Sir W. Powell, Bart., and were rebuilt in 1793. The old workhouse (built 1774) still stands on the left-hand side of the High Street. It has been in a dilapidated condition for many years, and is about to be pulled down. The Fulham and Hammersmith Union is now in Fulham Fields. Cipriani lived in a house adjoining the workhouse. Further on in Fulham High Street is the Golden Lion Inn. There is ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... little was said. Foot by foot they drew closer to the dilapidated structure, until it loomed up dimly before them. Then Dick motioned ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)

... road," from the crossing of the Essex Railroad to the point where it meets the road leading north from Tapleyville, has to-day a singular appearance of abandonment. The Surveyor of Highways ignores it. The old, gray, moss-covered stone walls are dilapidated, and thrown out of line. Not a house is on either of its borders, and no gate opens or path leads to any. Neglect and desertion brood over the contiguous grounds. Indeed, there is but one house standing ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... advanced, a remarkable and dilapidated trio, and dragged the door wide. Instantly there was a scurry and we caught sight of women's forms wearing only flowers, and but few of these, running over white sand towards groups of men armed with odd-looking clubs, some of which were fashioned to ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... the institutions for instruction. With respect to these, the restoration seems more difficult, for their ancient endowment is almost entirely wasted; the government has nothing to give back but dilapidated buildings, a few scattered investments formerly intended for the maintenance of a college scholarship, or for a village schoolhouse. And to whom should these be returned, since the college and the schoolhouse no longer exist? Fortunately, instruction is an article of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... for a living. My memories of home are inseparable from the odors of sheepskin and paste and the image of two upright wooden screws (the bookbinder's "machine"). The soldier had finished his term of military service years before, yet he still wore his uniform—a dilapidated black coat with new brass buttons, and a similar overcoat of a coarse gray material. Also, he still shaved his chin, sporting a pair of formidable gray side-whiskers. Shaving is one of the worst sins ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... cow," which he had so ardently longed for, now grazed soulfully in a temporary enclosure out on the mesa. Two young and sprightly black pigs prospected the confines of their littered hermitage. Four gaunt hens and a more or less dilapidated rooster stalked about the yard, no longer afraid of the watchful Chance, who had previously introduced himself to the rooster without the formality of Sundown's presence as mediator. Sundown was proud of his chickens. The cow, however, had been, at first, rather a disappointment to ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... of the street when we entered it, the dirty and dilapidated condition of the house when we drew up at the door, would have warned most men, in my position, to prepare themselves for a distressing discovery when they were admitted to the interior of the dwelling. The first impression which the place produced on my mind suggested, ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... least, death is imminent; and the mere presence of death serves to begin the change from the desire of the flesh to the ecstatic spiritual passion. That change is completed in the next act, where we have the scene laid before Tristan's deserted and dilapidated castle in Brittany, with the calm sea in the distance (it should shine like burnished steel); and here Tristan lies dying of the wound he received from Melot in the previous scene, while a melody from the shepherd's pipe, the saddest melody ever ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... looked more like picture houses than like real habitations of men; the mill with its burned-out roof—a reminder of the Indians—and its great wheel, now silent and still, might have been from its lonely and dilapidated appearance ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... dinners and suppers, have a place to sleep like other little boys, he gave a sigh of relief, took a deliberate look around the sunny room, and then thrust his little brown chubby hand into the pocket of his torn, dilapidated trousers, and drew forth the pennies that were snugly tucked away in their depths, and with a grateful smile, his black eyes fairly dancing for joy, he handed them to the superintendent, saying, "You give ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various

... time climbing the long hill leading to the haunted house, and it was just three o'clock when they came in sight of the dilapidated structure, almost hidden in the tangle of trees ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer

... monasteries and churches must come to the relief, and, to prevent all danger, no bishop should keep up a larger retinue than the king allowed. All bishops and cathedrals, with their chapters, must hand over to the king all income not absolutely necessary for their support. Since many monasteries were dilapidated and their lands were lying waste, an officer must be appointed by the crown to keep them up and hand over all their rents not needed for that purpose to the crown. The nobility were declared entitled to all property that had passed from their ancestors to the Church since 1454. Finally, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... indolently in the doorway of that mountain cabin, and wondering if the same thought were in her mind as was in his. At the same time came a welcome interruption in the appearance of a small child, brown as the proverbial berry, and bearing in her arms a large and rather dilapidated appearing doll. For an instant Donald failed to recognize her, and said, "Hello, here comes one of your little friends to see you, Smiles. Why, I do believe ... yes, it's Lou. Come along. You're not afraid of the doctor man who ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... before its fall, was already under sentence of demolition, and various schemes for its disposal were before the court. One project was to destroy seven of the towers, leaving the eighth standing in a dilapidated state. On the site of the seven, a pedestal formed of chains and bolts from the dungeons and gates was to bear a statue of Louis XVI. in the attitude of a liberator, pointing with outstretched hand towards the remaining tower in ruins. But Louis XVI. was always too late, and the Place de la Bastille, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... great influence upon our minds. Nothing will give a traveller a poorer and meaner opinion of a town and its inhabitants than dilapidated buildings surrounded by rubbish and broken-down fences. When a traveller passes a house of this character, he instinctively says to himself, "Some shiftless and poverty-stricken family lives here;" but when he passes a well-kept house with pleasant surroundings, he says, "This must be the abode ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... Rehoboam. It was said, that he had a negro mistress, and compelled his daughters to submit to her presence,—that he would not permit his children to read the Bible,—and that, on one occasion, when his attention was called to the dilapidated condition of a church, he remarked, "It is good enough for him who was born in a manger." According to his custom, he made no reply to these slanders, and, except from a few mild remarks in his letters, one cannot discover that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... age, with two goggle eyes (one of which was fixed), a rubicund nose, a cadavarous[TN-41] face, and a suit of clothes decidedly the worse for wear. He had the gift of distorting and cracking his finger-joints. This kind-hearted, dilapidated fellow "kept his hunter and hounds once," but ran through his fortune. He discovered a plot of old Ralph, which he confided to the Cheeryble brothers, who frustrated it, and then provided for Newman.—C. Dickens, Nicholas ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... one of those well-known rooms which are occasionally met with in country cottages, the inmates of which are not wealthy. It was reserved exclusively for the purpose of receiving visitors. The furniture, though old, threadbare, and dilapidated, was kept scrupulously clean, and arranged symmetrically. There were a few books on the table, which were always placed with mathematical exactitude, and a set of chairs, so placed as to give one mysteriously the impression that they were not meant to be sat ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... too, are settling down into unkempt grounds with dilapidated porches and blinds. Such eyesores as one finds on the trolley-lines in any direction! They may have town-water supply, or they may depend on wells, but they ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... an effect which was not lessened by the clothes drying smokily on lines above. In one corner of the court yawned like the entrance to a cave the mouth of the passageway by which it was entered. In another stood a dilapidated handcart in which some dweller there was accustomed to carry abroad his rubbishy wares. The windows were for the most part curtainless, rising row above row with an aspect of wretchedness which gave Ashe a sense of discomfort so strong ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... connecting Hill Street and its wistful relicts with the statelier dignities and the more ephemeral gaieties of the opposite side. To be really "in society" one must cross over, either for good and all, or in the dilapidated "hack" which carried Gabriella to the parties of her schoolmates in West ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... changed since he left England; his face was thinner, and the hint of sensuality and empty self-assurance had faded out of it. His eyes were less bold, but they were steadier; and, sitting in the firelight, clad in dilapidated furs, he looked somehow more refined than he had done in evening dress in Marple's billiard-room. When he spoke, as he did at intervals, the confident tone which had once characterized him was no longer evident. He had learned to place a juster estimate upon his ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... and used it as a lever. The rotten planks gave way. One of them uncovered the lock, which he attacked with a big knife, containing a number of blades and implements. A minute later, the gate opened on a waste of bracken which led up to a long, dilapidated building, with a turret at each corner and a sort of a belvedere, built on a ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... other hand, when Thyrsis with his remorseless thoroughness would insist on getting out and inspecting some dilapidated and forlorn-looking place—then what agonies would come! Corydon would pass through the rooms, suffering all the horrors which she might have suffered in years of occupancy of them. And there was no use pleading with her to be reserved in her attitude—she took houses ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... lacking none of the ponderous quaintness that usually characterizes ancestral dwellings in that locality. The edifice could still boast of imposing grandeur, especially if classed among "fine ruins." Within and without were harmoniously dilapidated, and a large portion of the interior was uninhabitable. The limited resources of the count precluded even an apologetic semblance ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... beside the hull of a cutter-looking craft that had been completely gutted. But, changed and dilapidated as that hull is, I recognized it at once to be that of the Nelson. Now do you ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... night! Not the cold, wet, chilly night, that is settling down on the forlorn-looking city outside; not the cheerless night, that makes the news-boy gather his rags more closely about him, and stand under the projecting doorway of some dilapidated, tenantless building, as he cries "Free Press, only two cents:" not the awful night on which the gaunt haggard children, who thrive on starvation, crouch shiveringly around the last hissing fagot on the fire-place, with big, hungry eyes wandering over the low ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... streets in the Montagne St. Genevieve district. At the epoch of this narrative, the house No. 4, in this street, was composed of one principal building, through which ran a dark passage, leading to a little, gloomy court, at the end of which was a second building, in a singularly miserable and dilapidated condition. On the ground-floor, in front of the house, was a half-subterraneous shop, in which was sold charcoal, fagots, vegetables, and milk. Nine o'clock in the morning had just struck. The mistress of the shop, one Mother Arsene, an old woman of a mild, sickly countenance, clad in a brown ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... dismal sparrows, and the most dismal cats, and the most dismal houses (in number half a dozen or so), that I had ever seen. I thought the windows of the sets of chambers into which those houses were divided were in every stage of dilapidated blind and curtain, crippled flower-pot, cracked glass, dusty decay, and miserable makeshift; while To Let, To Let, To Let, glared at me from empty rooms, as if no new wretches ever came there, and the vengeance of the soul of Barnard were being slowly appeased by the gradual suicide of the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... lined the curb: nighthawk taxicabs for the most part, with one or two four-wheelers, as many disreputable and dilapidated hansoms, and (aside from that in which P. Sybarite had arrived) a single taxicab of decent appearance. This last stood, with door ajar, immediately opposite the side entrance, its motor pulsing audibly—evidently ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... George, with seven emaciated Arabs and five dilapidated camels, crawled into Omdurman, bringing Richard Stanton's young widow, their arrival made a sensation for all Egypt. Later, in Khartoum, when the history of the murder and the subsequent march of nine hundred ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... the same subject, memb. 15. p. 579., dated on Tuesday, Dec. 12, 1223. I would therefore ask, with submission to those who may be better informed, whether the bridge, though ordered to be repaired by Henry III., may not have remained in such a dilapidated state in the time of Edw. II., that it may then have been styled ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various

... and strange it is, that, in ancient dilapidated monuments of the Ceylonese, religious sculptures, &c., the unicorn of Scotland frequently appears according to its true heraldic (i.e. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... moodily, my chin on my chest and much too absorbed in reflection to have any nice appreciation of what was happening about me, I was crossing in front of a dilapidated block of houses, dating back nearly to the time of the Pilgrim Fathers, when I had a vague consciousness of something dark suddenly sweeping by me—a thing like a huge bat, or a solid shadow, if such a thing could be, and the next ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... descent from "auld Wat of Harden" [13] and to claim kinship with the bold Buccleuch. He used to make annual pilgrimages to Harden Tower, "the incunabula of his race"; and "in the earlier part of his life," says Lockhart, "he had nearly availed himself of his kinsman's permission to fit up the dilapidated peel for ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... the impetuous rider drew up before a dark, weather-beaten, dilapidated building, at the north end of the village, and dismounted. The old chestnut by the fence creaked dismally as the winds swept fiercely up from the valley below, and through one of the swaying boughs came a faintly twinkling light, which seemed forcing itself ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... with all his strength at this point, should he find it divested of any of the chief means of defence which are by all nations accorded to maritime ports of chief importance, He would find Chicago very much in such a state of weakness, if the harborworks here are allowed to fall into a dilapidated condition; for then our naval force would not itself be secure in hovering about this port, or in cruising in its immediate vicinity for purposes of military defence. There is scarcely a week in the year that a fleet might not have occasion to take refuge from the lake-gales in a safe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... subsequent home. At Arsta the father of Fredrika, who had amassed a fortune in the iron industry in Finland, set up an establishment in accord with his means. The manor-house, built two centuries before, had become in some parts dilapidated, but it was ultimately restored and improved beyond its original condition. From its windows on one side the eye stretched over nearly five miles of meadows, fields, and villages ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... were the relics of the conflagration, bent with the heat of the fire, and rusted with the wintry rain to which they had since been exposed. The brightest sunshine could not have made the scene cheerful, nor have taken away the gloom from the dilapidated town; for, besides the natural shabbiness, and decayed, unthrifty look of a Virginian village, it has an inexpressible forlornness resulting from the devastations of war and its occupation by both armies alternately. Yet there would be a less striking contrast between Southern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... irregular fragments of old brickwork partially covered with ferns, creepers, or rockplants, weeds, or wild flowers; and, in the centre of the circle, a fountain, or rather well, over which was built a Gothic monastic dome, or canopy, resting on small Norman columns, time-worn, dilapidated. A large willow overhung this unmistakable relic of the ancient abbey. There was an air of antiquity, romance, legend about this spot, so abruptly disclosed amidst the delicate green of the young shrubberies. But it was not the ruined wall nor the Gothic ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... camp. A section of an electric railway that was thirty-two miles long ran through the street, and the handsomely equipped cars on it clipped past mud-encrusted mule teams from distant hill farms, prairie schooners, and dilapidated carryalls. The scene was tremendously, occidentally irregular, setting forth that merciless clutch of the future upon the past that makes the present mere transition. The town was hard pushed to catch ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... written on the spoils proves, against both me and them, that Cossus was consul when he took them. Having once heard Augustus Caesar, the founder or restorer of all our temples, on entering the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, which being dilapidated by time he rebuilt, aver that he himself had read the said inscription on the linen breastplate, I thought it would be next to sacrilege to rob Cossus of such a testimony respecting his spoils as that of Caesar, the renovator of the temple itself. Whether the mistake ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... was made up in the dilapidated brick stove. A board was found, fixed on two saddles and covered with a horsecloth, a small samovar was produced and a cellaret and half a bottle of rum, and having asked Mary Hendrikhovna to preside, they ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... but the suggestion was all of summer heat. There was a watering-trough and hitching-rail directly opposite, a little to one side of Hemmenway's feed-store, and there a well-fed mare stood, drooping dejectedly between the shafts of a dilapidated buggy. On the corner was a two-storey brick building with large plate-glass windows on the ground floor for the display of intimate articles of feminine apparel. The black and gold sign above proclaimed it: "The Fair. Dry Goods & Notions. Leonard & Call." Duncan considered ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... 'In dilapidated caravanserais I found quantities of dead, many corpses being half-decomposed, and others still living among them who were soon to breathe their last. In other yards I found quantities of sick and dying people, whom nobody was looking ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson

... the scene is laid in Westphalia. The impoverished Baron Schnuck-Puckelig-Erbsenscheucher, a faithful representative of the narrow-minded and prejudiced nobility, lives with his prudish, sentimental daughter, Emerentia, in the dilapidated castle, Schnick Schnack-Schnurr. Their sole companion is the daft school-teacher, Agesel, who, having lost, from too much study of phonetics, the major part of his never gigantic mind, imagines that he is a direct descendant of the Spartan King Agesilaus. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... corrected the Kid. But he let her have the bag, and Miss Allen looked inside. There were some dried prunes that looked like lumps of dirty dough, and six dilapidated doughnuts in a mess of jelly, and a small ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... 3, 7) divides these functions under three heads:—(1) Care of the city: the repair and preservation of temples, sewers and aqueducts; street cleansing and paving; regulations regarding traffic, dangerous animals and dilapidated buildings; precautions against fire; superintendence of baths and taverns; enforcement of sumptuary laws; punishment of gamblers and usurers; the care of public morals generally, including the prevention of foreign superstitions. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... The dilapidated state of things about the "Great House" told truly the story of waning fortunes, and poverty was pressing upon the master. One by one the able-bodied slaves disappeared; some were sold, others hired to other masters. No ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford

... one of the darkest of the dilapidated tenements, the dusty window panes of which the last glow in the winter sky is tinging faintly with red, a dance is in progress. The guests, most of them fresh from the hillsides of Mount Lebanon, squat about the room. A reed-pipe ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... on the roof of a building across the street, one might have seen a bent, skulking figure. His face was copper colored and on his head was a thick thatch of matted hair. He looked like a South American Indian, in a very dilapidated suit of ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... week later, in the course of the round-up, we reached the valley of the Box Springs, where we camped for some days at the dilapidated and abandoned adobe structure that had once been a ranch house ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... unpopular character, a miser. Your miser may be looked up to, in a way, as an ideal votary of Mammon, but he is never loved. On his vast possessions, mainly in coal-fields, he was even more detested than the ordinary run of capitalists. The cottages and farmhouses on his estates were dilapidated and insanitary beyond what is endurable. Of his many mansions, some were kept in decent repair, because he drew many shillings from tourists admitted to view them. But his favourite abode was almost as ruinous as his cottages, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... straight to his heart, like the girls I had read of. On the contrary, I much resembled a female clown. It was on a day towards the end of September, and I had been up the creek making a collection of ferns. I had on a pair of men's boots with which to walk in the water, and was garbed in a most dilapidated old dress, which I had borrowed from one of the servants for the purpose. A pair of gloves made of basil, and a big hat, much torn in struggling through the undergrowth, completed my make-up. My hair was most unbecomingly screwed up, the ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... that were furnished chiefly in the light green of deciduous trees; it was part of a long stretch thickly set for miles with the dark and sombre green of pines. Our nature-lover had taken, the year before, a neglected and dilapidated old farmhouse and had made it into what her friends and habitues liked to call a bungalow. The house had been put up—in the rustic spirit which ignores all considerations of landscape and outlook—behind a well-treed dune which allowed but the merest glimpse of the lake; however, ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... upon the ivy-covered wall of a high dilapidated terrace which overlooked the lake. My eyes wandered over the bright expanse of water and the luminous immensity of the sky; they were so well blended in the azure line of the horizon that it would have been impossible to ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... in his dilapidated office chair thinking over all this, when he heard his brother physician's step on the stairs. Harry came in, dusty and worn, from a long ride in the country on an all-night case. His tired face lit up when ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... hand they stood, seeing, by reason of the gloom, vastly little of the columns which have the strange shape of tent-poles; then walked warily and still hand in hand in and out of various and dilapidated chambers. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... the sad condition of my dress, which appeared more miserable and more dilapidated still amid the surrounding splendors; and, in a ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... Outside, the chancel has good buttresses at the angles, and is crowned by that curious boat-like corbel table seen at Santarem and by a row of pyramidal battlements. The church is only about 150 feet long, but with its two picturesque and dilapidated towers, and the wonderful deep purple of its sandstone walls rising above the whitewashed houses and palms of the older Silves and backed by the Moorish citadel, it makes a most picturesque and even striking centre to the ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... rifle and, drawing his six-shooter, ran out and dashed for the dilapidated door, while Hopalong covered that opening ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha, true helper and protector of all destitute and needy vagabonds; master landlord here and the great Sancho Panza shall be the arbitrators and appraisers between your worship and me of what these dilapidated figures are worth or ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra



Words linked to "Dilapidated" :   damaged



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