How to Use decrepitude in a Sentence

decrepitude

noun
  • The house has fallen into decrepitude.
  • Outsiders, even close friends, weren’t allowed in to witness the decrepitude.
    — Dwight Garner, New York Times, 5 Aug. 2019
  • What comes next is easy, too, assuming my brain and the rest of me slide toward decrepitude at a normal rate.
    — Dan McSwain, sandiegouniontribune.com, 10 Sep. 2017
  • Its school buildings were tired — some edging into decrepitude.
    — Anna M. Phillips, latimes.com, 10 Apr. 2018
  • How much of the aging process is an inevitable slide into decrepitude, and how much is a result of not getting enough exercise?
    — Alex Hutchinson, Outside Online, 10 Mar. 2023
  • What’s at stake in this fictional world isn’t prison, poverty and early onset decrepitude, but whether or not the wedding bells will ring.
    — Max Watman, WSJ, 28 May 2021
  • An heirloom object, a functional investment, or just a sign of one’s own decrepitude.
    — Jenny Singer, Glamour, 12 Apr. 2022
  • At 72 years of age (that’s 14 in cat years), Lloyd Webber bears no signs of decrepitude.
    — Washington Post, 4 Dec. 2020
  • But the decrepitude of this still beautiful structure stirred something within us—a reminder of a golden age, a symbol of a lost paradise?
    — Klara Glowczewska, Town & Country, 14 Apr. 2016
  • Her somewhat sad and depressive life is rendered with fine touches, the decrepitude of the home standing in for her current condition.
    — Washington Post, 17 July 2021
  • Once a city reliant on heavy industry, Erie is moving past the stereotype of Rust Belt decrepitude.
    — New York Times, 7 Oct. 2019
  • His advanced decrepitude will be matched only by the looming threat of irrelevance in a desensitized world.
    — Hunter Ingram, Variety, 25 Oct. 2023
  • If that’s not enough for perennial contention, then the rest of the AFC East’s decrepitude will keep that window wide open.
    — Tim Graham, The Athletic, 7 Jan. 2025
  • The discipline of writing, from age thirty, became a lifejacket that kept Ellroy afloat above the tide of decrepitude that shaped his early years.
    — Stuart Franklin, The New York Review of Books, 10 Mar. 2020
  • For years, the levee running along the Pajaro River had been neglected despite concerns about its decrepitude.
    — Susanne Rust, Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2023
  • People bought there, people built there, and when the real estate company folded, the sign that was meant to stand for 18 months soldiered on into decrepitude for years.
    — Patt Morrisoncolumnist, Los Angeles Times, 16 Feb. 2023
  • Americans, meanwhile, have a diet of TV shows and memes that link aging with uselessness, weakness, and decrepitude.
    — Marty Munson, Men's Health, 28 Mar. 2023
  • Chimpanzees take 30 years and humans typically 60 or more before the process of decrepitude begins.
    — Gary Taubes, Discover Magazine, 6 Feb. 2011
  • If only the actual Miss America were as gorgeous and erudite as this essay about the decrepitude of a stagnant pageant in a changing world.
    — Longreads, 10 Aug. 2020
  • From that point on, Fuller didn’t have more than 60 receiving yards in any game, as the Houston passing attack fell into a state of utter decrepitude.
    — Pat Fitzmaurice, SI.com, 2 Aug. 2017
  • Many famous defendants have aimed for respectability, maturity, wide-eyed innocence or even pitiful decrepitude on their days in court.
    — Ashley Fetters Maloy, Washington Post, 22 Mar. 2023
  • Although long considered ancient, in recent years their decrepitude has come under debate, with evidence suggesting a more youthful formation.
    — Nola Taylor Redd, Smithsonian, 1 May 2017
  • The return to office of the preferred politicians of this group would signal the decisive nose-dive into moral and intellectual decrepitude of the entire American project.
    — Conrad Black, National Review, 15 Aug. 2017
  • County Council took several steps recent years to address the shortcomings that prosecutors said allowed Mills to run the jail into decrepitude.
    — Cory Shaffer, cleveland, 18 Sep. 2021
  • Despite Orlok’s prosthetic decrepitude and the plague-like toxicity of his love, what truly horrifies Ellen about him is that some unknown part of her nature craves his touch.
    — David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 2 Dec. 2024
  • Another important reason for the growing ranks of senior athletes is a shift in the mindset of older Americans, who no longer see aging as a sadly inevitable slide into decline and decrepitude.
    — Los Angeles Times, 3 Mar. 2022
  • Other potential buyers perceived the institutional decrepitude as a drawback.
    — Bruce Schoenfeld, New York Times, 30 Mar. 2016
  • Alt-right talking heads have rallied around the remarks, using any episode of violence in Sweden as evidence that the president presciently exposed the nation’s spiraling moral decrepitude.
    — Laignee Barron, Time, 20 Oct. 2017
  • The residents remained in limbo, mostly fending for themselves—not paying anything, living in buildings that were in varying states of decrepitude, and still considered, technically, squatters.
    — Wes Enzinna, Harper’s Magazine , 5 Jan. 2023
  • The modes of loss that Shyamalan dramatizes range from the confusion of sudden adolescence and the anguish of onrushing decrepitude and death to the merely uncanny sense that unexpected pleasures are too good to be true.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 22 July 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'decrepitude.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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