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WITHERED
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Lean and wrinkled by shrinkage as from age or illness
Example:
a wizened little man with frizzy grey hair
Synonyms:
shriveled; shrivelled; shrunken; withered; wizen; wizened
Classified under:
Similar:
lean; thin (lacking excess flesh)
Sense 2
Meaning:
(used especially of vegetation) having lost all moisture
Example:
withered vines
Synonyms:
dried-up; sear; sere; shriveled; shrivelled; withered
Classified under:
Similar:
dry (free from liquid or moisture; lacking natural or normal moisture or depleted of water; or no longer wet)
Domain category:
botany; flora; vegetation (all the plant life in a particular region or period)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Past simple / past participle of the verb wither
Context examples:
His hair and whiskers were shot with grey, and his face was all crinkled and puckered like a withered apple.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Besides, there is that peculiar voice of hers, so animating and piquant, as well as soft: it cheers my withered heart; it puts life into it.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Mr. Summerlee, the veteran Professor of Comparative Anatomy, rose among the audience, a tall, thin, bitter man, with the withered aspect of a theologian.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of devilish fury; and the smile withered from his face—happily for him—yet more happily for myself, for in another instant I had certainly dragged him from his perch.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Delighted with her progress, and fearful of wearying her with too much wisdom at once, Henry suffered the subject to decline, and by an easy transition from a piece of rocky fragment and the withered oak which he had placed near its summit, to oaks in general, to forests, the enclosure of them, waste lands, crown lands and government, he shortly found himself arrived at politics; and from politics, it was an easy step to silence.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Keep this near your heart—as he spoke he lifted a little silver crucifix and held it out to me, I being nearest to him—put these flowers round your neck—here he handed to me a wreath of withered garlic blossoms—for other enemies more mundane, this revolver and this knife; and for aid in all, these so small electric lamps, which you can fasten to your breast; and for all, and above all at the last, this, which we must not desecrate needless.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Where any of these wanted fortunes, I would provide them with convenient lodges round my own estate, and have some of them always at my table; only mingling a few of the most valuable among you mortals, whom length of time would harden me to lose with little or no reluctance, and treat your posterity after the same manner; just as a man diverts himself with the annual succession of pinks and tulips in his garden, without regretting the loss of those which withered the preceding year.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves, and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which had drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
It was not the axe, however, but a branch which he had fastened to a withered tree which the wind was blowing backwards and forwards.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
It was so wrinkled and shrunken and withered that it was difficult to say what it might have been.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
