Library / English Dictionary

CRUMBLE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Fall into decay or ruin

Example:

The unoccupied house started to decay

Synonyms:

crumble; decay; dilapidate

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "crumble" is one way to...):

change (undergo a change; become different in essence; losing one's or its original nature)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "crumble"):

deteriorate (become worse or disintegrate)

corrode; rust (become destroyed by water, air, or a corrosive such as an acid)

weather (change under the action or influence of the weather)

eat at; erode; gnaw; gnaw at; wear away (become ground down or deteriorate)

droop; wilt (become limp)

ruin (fall into ruin)

break; bust; fall apart; wear; wear out (go to pieces)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s

Sense 2

Meaning:

Break or fall apart into fragments

Example:

The Sphinx is crumbling

Synonyms:

crumble; fall apart

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "crumble" is one way to...):

disintegrate (break into parts or components or lose cohesion or unity)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Something is ----ing PP

Sense 3

Meaning:

Fall apart

Example:

Negotiations broke down

Synonyms:

break down; collapse; crumble; crumple; tumble

Classified under:

Verbs of walking, flying, swimming

Hypernyms (to "crumble" is one way to...):

change integrity (change in physical make-up)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s

Sentence example:

The business is going to crumble

Credits

 Context examples: 

I had not seen a coal fire, since I had left England three years ago: though many a wood fire had I watched, as it crumbled into hoary ashes, and mingled with the feathery heap upon the hearth, which not inaptly figured to me, in my despondency, my own dead hopes.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I sat down on the narrow ledge; I hushed the scared infant in my lap: you turned an angle of the road: I bent forward to take a last look; the wall crumbled; I was shaken; the child rolled from my knee, I lost my balance, fell, and woke.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouch at man's feet, this grief has never come.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The rusted gates between the crumbling heraldic pillars were folded back, and my uncle flicked the mares impatiently as we flew up the weed-grown avenue, until he pulled them on their haunches before the time-blotched steps.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Didn't they steal sips of tea, stuff gingerbread ad libitum, get a hot biscuit apiece, and as a crowning trespass, didn't they each whisk a captivating little tart into their tiny pockets, there to stick and crumble treacherously, teaching them that both human nature and a pastry are frail?

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

It was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumble into dust and passed from our sight.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Indeed, she was a slender, delicate woman as women go, but to me she was so ethereally slender and delicate that I was quite prepared for her arm to crumble in my grasp.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I am poor; for I find that, when I have paid my father's debts, all the patrimony remaining to me will be this crumbling grange, the row of scathed firs behind, and the patch of moorish soil, with the yew-trees and holly-bushes in front.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

In those that remained, there was scarcely any glass; and, through the crumbling frames by which the bad air seemed always to come in, and never to go out, I saw, through other glassless windows, into other houses in a similar condition, and looked giddily down into a wretched yard, which was the common dust-heap of the mansion.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

For, friend John, hardly had my knife severed the head of each, before the whole body began to melt away and crumble in to its native dust, as though the death that should have come centuries agone had at last assert himself and say at once and loud I am here!

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)