as in shed
to cast (a natural bodily covering or appendage) aside
a crab molts its shell as it grows larger
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Recent Examples of molted
Our fish farm worked beautifully right up until the NewCoral molted, growing fins and fangs and one rocky fin, terrorizing the coastline and hunting the NewFish almost to NewExtinction.
—
Literary Hub, 11 Sep. 2025
Literary Hub, 11 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for molted
Verb
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Snap, the Los Angeles-area company behind Snapchat, will indeed shed 1,000 staffers, or about 16% of its full-time workforce.—
Andrew Nusca,
Fortune,
16 Apr. 2026
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Along the way, the Yale art historian inflects canonical works with fresh insight, shedding light on the two seasons into which the artist’s sculpture is relentlessly confined in art historical accounts.—
Ara H. Merjian,
ARTnews.com,
16 Apr. 2026
Verb
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For example, there’s quite a bit of autopsy footage in Faces of Death — lots of literal getting under the skin, and also, in one of the movie’s more stomach-turning moments, having skin peeled back off a skull.—
Louis Peitzman,
Vulture,
10 Apr. 2026
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The daughter peeled her mother’s hands away from Louise.—
Catherine Lacey,
New Yorker,
5 Apr. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Molted.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/molted. Accessed 21 Apr. 2026.
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