dilapidating

present participle of dilapidate

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for dilapidating
Verb
  • By the time it was all set up, the whole cold, disintegrating place was threaded with lights and lines, flickering everywhere, black and red, the sheer quantity somehow terrifying and embracing at once.
    Blair Braverman, Outside, 28 Oct. 2025
  • This difference sounds small, but preventing a few tenths of a degree of warming could keep polar ice caps from completely disintegrating, coral reefs from collapsing and other tipping points from triggering.
    Syris Valentine, Scientific American, 16 Oct. 2025
Verb
  • Bugs and scientists have long been oddball allies in the effort to understand decomposing bodies, but there's a catch.
    Phaedra Trethan, USA Today, 29 Oct. 2025
  • The round spots seemed neat compared with their surroundings, clear of the layers of decomposing plankton spotted elsewhere on the seafloor.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN Money, 29 Oct. 2025
Verb
  • But then a fresh corpse turns up, as well as a long-moldering skeleton, and the club members are off and running.
    Tom Gliatto, People.com, 27 Aug. 2025
Verb
  • The local politicians like Mayor Wu who are staying mum are just compounding cronyism and degrading the livability of the neighborhood.
    Lou Murray, Boston Herald, 29 Oct. 2025
  • Rain, wind gusts, birds and other atmospheric surprises during low-altitude flight might alter the inflowing air to the cruise missile, degrading the reactor.
    Dan Vergano, Scientific American, 28 Oct. 2025
Verb
  • Because lose-lose situations are so endemic to the genre, a hint of relief can sometimes accompany the prospect of surrender to the putrefying mob.
    Katy Waldman, New Yorker, 9 Aug. 2025
Verb
  • The ensuing 2022-23 season saw Rayo beat both Barca and Madrid when Spain’s big two came to their crumbling Estadio Vallecas.
    Dermot Corrigan, New York Times, 9 Nov. 2025
  • Frank’s crew rolls into the crumbling squat that is Colombian HQ, sporting body armor and flamethrowers.
    Noel Murray, Vulture, 9 Nov. 2025
Verb
  • Before the night was out, Germans began chipping away at the barrier, carrying off chunks of one of the symbols of the diminishing Iron Curtain.
    Arizona Republic, AZCentral.com, 9 Nov. 2025
  • Business leaders say that such policies risk accelerating an exodus of companies, diminishing the city’s commercial tax base, and ultimately affecting services and jobs essential to millions of New Yorkers.
    Hollie Silverman, MSNBC Newsweek, 8 Nov. 2025
Verb
  • Elites stirred up a now familiar moral panic about commerce corrupting letters and mocked Grub Street even as its writers built the first modern freelance economy and mass-print culture.
    Deni Ellis Béchard, Scientific American, 8 Nov. 2025
  • But the church also taught that the power of music could be corrupting.
    Vann R. Newkirk II, The Atlantic, 18 Oct. 2025
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Cite this Entry

“Dilapidating.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/dilapidating. Accessed 14 Nov. 2025.

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