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Moth-eaten   /mɔθ-ˈitən/   Listen
Moth-eaten

adjective
1.
Showing signs of wear and tear.  Synonyms: ratty, shabby, tatty.  "Shabby furniture" , "An old house with dirty windows and tatty curtains"
2.
Worn or eaten away by (or as if by) moths.  Synonym: mothy.
3.
Lacking originality or spontaneity; no longer new.  Synonyms: cold, dusty, stale.  "Stale news"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Moth-eaten" Quotes from Famous Books



... such breezy language. There were chairs, cushions, tables, pictures, golf clubs, rugs and all sorts of things advertised for sale, while one chap sought a purchaser for "a stuffed white owl, mounted on a branch, slightly moth-eaten. Cash or ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... man! And me with a white-faced cow that I'm afraid of my life of, and an old horse that looks like a moth-eaten hide trunk we to have in our garret at home when I was a little girl, and belonged to ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... something agreeable to him. He sat boldly up there, and looked down upon the people in the street. There was one stepping along, proud of his purse, another of the key he carried at his girdle, though he had nothing to unlock; one proud of his moth-eaten coat, another of his wasted body. "Vanity! I must hasten downward, dip my finger in the pot, and taste!" he said. "But for awhile I will still sit here, for the wind blows so pleasantly against my back. I'll sit here so long as ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... point to such a glorious history! There was the guild chapel as proof, and in it the lantern from the prow of the vessel, which the conscienceless wretches declared dated from many centuries after the supposed battle; and there were the guild drums, and the glorious banner; and the moth-eaten hide of the lion, in which all his predecessors had encased themselves, lay now forgotten behind the altar, covered with cobwebs and dust, but it was none the less as authentic and worthy of reverence as ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... awakened in his mind, un-self-conscious as it was, that something ought to be done; that something was wrong in him somewhere; that it ought to be set right somehow—a feeling which every one in the pew shared, except one. His heart was so moth-eaten and rusty, with the moths and the rust which Mammon brings with him when he comes in to abide with a man, that there was not enough of it left to make the terrible discovery that the rest of it was gone. Its owner did not know that there ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... neither realize nor understand. He reserves his most biting condemnation for those second-hand critics who accept other people's opinions for their criteria, and rave over "beauty," "soul," "character," "expression" and "tone" in wretched, dingy, moth-eaten pictures. He hated with the heartiest detestation such people—whose sole ambition seemed to be to make a fine show of knowledge of art by means of an easily acquired vocabulary of inexpressive technical terms ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... moth-eaten bowler started warbling to a certain extent with me. It was all very trying for a man of culture. He was a man who had, I should say, discovered that alcohol was a food long before the doctors found it out. A good chap, possibly, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... a—," and paused, not knowing what on earth to call it. Then rapidly to cover up his ignorance he pointed confidently to a somewhat similar fowl and said sagely, "And there's another!" The curious moth-eaten and shabby appearance that captive camels always exhibit was accurately recorded in his addressing one of them as "poor old horsie." And after watching the llamas in silence, when he saw them nibble at some grass he was satisfied. "Moo-cow," he stated positively, ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... observation of spiritual tides, winds and currents can be ignorant of the fact that the devout men and women of the present are earnestly inquiring, "What is sanctification? What does holiness mean?" They are demanding of the pulpit and of the church editor something more than the time-worn and moth-eaten excuses for not teaching a deeper work of grace. The "seven thousand" who have not "bowed the knee" to the modern Baals are insisting that, if God's Word teaches entire sanctification for the disciple of Christ obtainable by faith now, they must possess ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees

... Wilmot, conducted by his chauffeur, accompanied by the prettiest, most coquettish Miss Goodrich, and one of Mrs. Shuster's Peace League Confreres, ex-Senator Collinge, a violently intelligent man who looks (Mrs. Winston says) like a moth-eaten lion ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... turne away these roaring boyes When they intend to rock licentious thoughts In a soft roome, where every long Cushion is Embroydered with old Histories of peace, And all the hangings of Warre thrust into the Wardrobe Till they grow musty or moth-eaten. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... run off he returns to the Ring for the serious business of the day. After examining Transformation in the paddock and listening to the comments of the knowing ones—"Too thick in the barrel," "Too long in the pastern," "Too moth-eaten in the coat"—he will exercise caution and, instead of "putting his shirt" on Transformation and plunging to the extent of, say, L5, will put up not more than L3 10s. and await the result with calmness. When Transformation is returned unplaced (or, as "O. T." and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various

... Margaret viciously. 'You would come to your senses in a week with a start, to find your idol in a very shaky and moth-eaten state. I'm horribly human, after all! I ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... "if this ain't a wild-goose chase I dunno what you calls it. Here you've gone an' took me away from my happy home, an' brought me across the ragin' Atlantic, an' dumped me in a moth-eaten little village where there ain't nothin' fit to drink, all because I happened to chum ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... weep, wailing for your miseries that are coming upon you. (2)Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are become moth-eaten. (3)Your gold and silver is rusted; and the rust of them will be a witness against you, and will eat your flesh as fire. Ye heaped up treasure, ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various

... took her hands down from his shoulders and drew his face away from the mouldy-smelling old shawl, he looked toward the door, and Ruth stood in the entrance. Her eyes blazed with wrath, but as she saw the faded and bedraggled dress and moth-eaten shawl and looked into the tear-stained motherly old face ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... stone so artistically wrought as to suggest the grill-work of the matchless Taj Mahal. Great gray monkeys descend from the mountain slope to feed from the hands of your guides; and they are not of the moth-eaten variety seen in captivity, but are freeborn denizens of the forest, whose coats glisten and whose curly tails ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... old-fashioned thing that framed in her silver-white hair like a pent-house. The very shape and fashion of this bonnet was pathetic—it spoke of so long ago. The black dress and soft shawl with which she had come to the prison were a little moth-eaten, but not much, for they had been carefully hoarded; but the poor old woman looked with a sigh on her prison-dress as it fell to the floor, and wept bitterly before she went out, as if that gloomy mass of stones had been a ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... scheduled to begin soon after daybreak, and before that time Rankin and Ben Blair were at the Baker house. They wore their ordinary clothes of wool and leather, but Scotty appeared in a wonderful red hunting-coat, which, though a bit moth-eaten in spots, nevertheless showed glaringly against the brown ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... Edna and she followed along through the deserted rooms, catching sight of a moth-eaten cover here, a bunch of withered flowers there. Books, long untouched, lay half open on a table in one room, the bed was still unmade in another, and ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard

... face, began to nod his head, bent to one side, as is done by little swarthy, dirty, oriental lads who roam over all Russia in long, old, soldiers' overcoats, with bared chest of a bronze colour, holding a coughing, moth-eaten little monkey ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... intention of abandoning the pretensions to youth for many a year. In dress he was as spick and span as a tailor at the trade's annual convention. But he had evidently been "going some" for several days; the sour, worn, haggard face rising above his elegantly fitting collar suggested a moth-eaten jaguar that has been for weeks on short rations ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... he contemnes, as a novelty of this latter age; but a manuscript he pores on everlastingly; especially if the cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving



Words linked to "Moth-eaten" :   unoriginal, worn



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