ROTTING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • 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

... policy was intended as a pressure on English merchants. But it was a half-measure and did not affect British legislation, which had for its object the utter annihilation of American commerce. Neither France nor England was hurt seriously by the Embargo, while our ships lay rotting at the wharves, and our merchants found that their occupation was gone. The New England merchants were discouraged and discontented. It was not they who wished to see their ships shut up by a doubtful policy. They would have ...

— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... team. Tom either broke trail or followed. He came across plenty of tracks, but most of them were old ones. He recognized the spoor of deer, bear, and innumerable rabbits. Toward noon fresh caribou tracks crossed their path. The slot pointed south. Over a soft and rotting trail Morse ...

— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... waits till the calls come in; But the old grey horse, like the claim, is played out, And no market's near for his bones and skin. So they let him live, and they left him grazing By the creek, and oft in the evening dim I have seen him stand on the rises, gazing At the ruined brace and the rotting whim. ...

— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... Farther on, the city of Peking spread out in huge expanses hemmed in only miles away by the grey tracing of the city walls and the high-standing towers. Farther again were waving fields with uncut crops rotting as they stood, because all the country people had fled to escape the vengeance. On the very horizon line were dark hills. The view was ...

— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... sticks together and made a fire and put the billy on. The country looked wretched—like the ghost of a burnt-out land—in the moonlight. The banks of the creek were like ashes, the thin, gnarled gum-bush seemed dry-rotting fast, and in many places the surface of the ground was cracked in squares where it had shrunk in the drought. In the bed of the creek was a narrow gutter of water that looked like ...

— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

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