DECAY in a Sentence

Learn DECAY from example sentences; some of them are from classic books. These examples are selected from a corpus with 300,000 sentences, including classic works and current mainstream media. Some sentences also link to their contexts.

86 example sentences for DECAY, such as:

1. Her body was already starting to decay.
2. The smell of death and decay hung over the town.
3. The landlord had let the building fall into decay.
4. The tree began to decay as soon as it was cut down.
5. The castle has fallen into decay in the last100 years.

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 Meanings and Examples of DECAY
Definition Example Sentence Classic Sentence
decay
 v.  decompose; break sown; disintegration; rottenness; decline; worsen; decadence
Classic Sentence: (68 in 5 pages)
1  Better far that your bones should bleach in this wilderness than that you should prove to be that little speck of decay which in time corrupts the whole fruit.
A Study In Scarlet By Arthur Conan Doyle
Context  Highlight   In PART II: CHAPTER I. ON THE GREAT ALKALI PLAIN
2  As I am here beside you, barefoot, unclothed, undistinguishable in darkness, so must I lie through all the night of my decay, until I am dust.
Hard Times By Charles Dickens
Context  Highlight   In BOOK 2: CHAPTER VII
3  But the wife of Front-de-Boeuf, for whom it had been originally furnished, was long dead, and decay and neglect had impaired the few ornaments with which her taste had adorned it.
Ivanhoe By Walter Scott
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XXIII
4  Misfortune had struck them gracefully, cutting off their erratic histories with a catastrophic dash, instead of, as with many, attenuating each life to an uninteresting meagreness, through long years of wrinkles, neglect, and decay.
Return of the Native By Thomas Hardy
Context  Highlight   In BOOK 6: 1 The Inevitable Movement Onward
5  The night air was heavy with the smell of damp and decay.
The Hound of the Baskervilles By Arthur Conan Doyle
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 9. The Light upon the Moor [Second Report of Dr. ...
6  The house was invisible from the road, but the surroundings all spoke of gloom and decay.
The Return of Sherlock Holmes By Arthur Conan Doyle
Context  Highlight   In IV. THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY CYCLIST
7  And I shall have to tell you later that even the processes of putrefaction and decay had been profoundly affected by these changes.
The Time Machine By H. G. Wells
Context  Highlight   In IV
8  This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor and decay.
The Time Machine By H. G. Wells
Context  Highlight   In IV
9  But even on this supposition the balanced civilization that was at last attained must have long since passed its zenith, and was now far fallen into decay.
The Time Machine By H. G. Wells
Context  Highlight   In V
10  Clearly, at some time in the Long-Ago of human decay the Morlocks' food had run short.
The Time Machine By H. G. Wells
Context  Highlight   In VII
11  I even tried a Carlyle-like scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay.
The Time Machine By H. G. Wells
Context  Highlight   In VII
12  In the universal decay this volatile substance had chanced to survive, perhaps through many thousands of centuries.
The Time Machine By H. G. Wells
Context  Highlight   In VIII
13  I became acquainted with the science of anatomy, but this was not sufficient; I must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body.
Frankenstein By Mary Shelley
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 4
14  Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses.
Frankenstein By Mary Shelley
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 4
15  I saw, with surprise and grief, the leaves decay and fall, and nature again assume the barren and bleak appearance it had worn when I first beheld the woods and the lovely moon.
Frankenstein By Mary Shelley
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 15
Example Sentence: (18 in 2 pages)
1  Her body was already starting to decay.
2  Through the total fading away and extinction of craving, decay and death, sorrow, lamentation, suffering, grief, and despair are extinguished.
3  The smell of death and decay hung over the town.
4  The tree began to decay as soon as it was cut down.
5  The dentist could detect no sign of decay in her teeth.
6  Despite the decay the mosque somehow retained a profound grandeur.
7  The landlord had let the building fall into decay.
8  The wood is treated with preservative to prevent decay.
9  An optimistic theory of evolutionary progress was surreptitiously beginning to replace the pessimistic doctrine of universal decay.
10  The University of Florida researcher has come up with a brilliantly simple way to tackle tooth decay.
11  Hazards like human waste, meanwhile, will simply decay in the soil.
12  The smog hung over Victorian London like a dark cloud; noisome, reeking of decay, it was a visible miasma.
13  The castle has fallen into decay in the last100 years.
14  Here many of the skyscrapers are abandoned, leaving squatters, crime and urban decay.
15  The main reason people loose all their teeth, become edentate, is tooth decay, not gum disease.