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Dilapidated   /dəlˈæpədˌeɪtɪd/   Listen
Dilapidated

adjective
1.
In deplorable condition.  Synonyms: bedraggled, broken-down, derelict, ramshackle, tatterdemalion, tumble-down.  "A broken-down fence" , "A ramshackle old pier" , "A tumble-down shack"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Dilapidated" Quotes from Famous Books



... property in the Strand, and who was the first promoter of the Phoenix Fire Office. It seems to have been thought at the time that Newton was somewhat despotic in his announcement of the removal, and the members in council grumbled at the new house, and complained of it as small, inconvenient, and dilapidated. Nevertheless, Sir Isaac, unaccustomed to opposition, overruled all these objections, and the society flourished in this Fleet Street "close" seventy-two years. Before the society came to Crane Court, Pepys and Wren had been presidents; while at Crane Court the presidents were—Newton ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... the woebegone figure of adventure had set on fire her mother instinct and her sense of passionate romance. She saw him young, without the tangled beard, without the rags, without the dilapidated boots. She saw him in her mind as a warrior hero, storming difficulty, despising danger, wandering beneath the stars, a being resplendent as a prince and fearless as a deity. He was a sun of the morning, and the dawn was in his glorious ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... The dilapidated marble facade of the church and its rugged stone-work are exceedingly ancient—dating in fact from the eleventh century; the new building is by Brunelleschi and to my mind is one of his most beautiful works, its lovely proportions and cool, unfretted white spaces communicating even more pleasure ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... were on guard; some in the guard-house, and others too modest; and so, to many, the innocent visitor became a sort of pleasant agony; as it were, a "bitter sweet." Nothing ever so promptly convinced a Confederate soldier that he was dilapidated and not altogether as neat as he might be, as sudden precipitation into the presence of a neatly dressed, refined, and modest woman. Fortunately for the men, the women loved the very rags they wore, if they were gray; and when the war ended, they welcomed with open ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... Road there is a small inn, rather dilapidated and not attractive to travellers. Its customers are yokels from the neighbouring village, but occasionally a gentleman may be found warming himself at the open hearth and drinking the best that the house contains. Such a gentleman invariably rides a good horse, and is the recipient of open-mouthed ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner

... to his statement, his jacket being gone, leaving a dilapidated vest and ragged shirt alone to protect the upper part of his body. He shivered with the cold, for it ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger

... were dilapidated, but they were in the most beautiful surrounding conceivable, a sheltered cove of the lagoon where the swaying palms dipped their boles in the ultramarine, and bulky banana-plants and splendid breadfruit-trees formed a temple of shadow and coolth ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... father's business and estates, that the latter had made up his mind to be introduced to an "India Palace' counting-room. Judge of his surprise, then, when George led the way into an old, dirty-looking counting-room, very small and dingy, containing two dilapidated high desks, standing against the wall. They were made of pitch pine, painted and grained, but so scarred and whittled as to have the appearance of long use and abuse. In one corner was an old-fashioned low desk, provided with an ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... his companion, slid his revolver holsters round to the front within easy reach, should he need the weapons they contained, and slipped through the trees with the silence of a marauding tom-cat. Bradby watched him with some misgiving. No man could say with certainty just what secret the dilapidated hut held, and Bradby's state of mind was such that he took the gloomier view of the situation. He would not have been very much surprised to see half a dozen troopers issue from the hut. He would have taken it ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... questions before we reached the harbour again. Then we landed and explored the Church. This took us some time, owing to several freaks in its construction, for which I blessed the memory of its early-English builders. We went on to the Town Hall, the old Stannary Prison (now in ruins), the dilapidated Block-houses, the Battery. We traversed the town from end to end and studied the barge-boards and punkin-ends of every old house. I had meanly ordered that dinner should he ready half-an-hour earlier than usual, and, as it was, the objects ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood—at the head, I say, of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass—here, with a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening prospect, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of our—fortunately not very valuable—time we devoted to this wonderful novel of ours, I cannot exactly say. Turning the dogs'- eared leaves of the dilapidated diary that lies before me, I find the record of our later gatherings confused and incomplete. For weeks there does not appear a single word. Then comes an alarmingly business-like minute of a meeting at which there were—"Present: Jephson, MacShaughnassy, Brown, and Self"; and at which the "Proceedings ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... to examine it. The castle was not exceptionally large, but it had all the characteristics of its most important fellows. Irregular, dilapidated, and muffled in creepers as a great portion of it was, some part—a comparatively modern wing—was inhabited, for a light or two steadily gleamed from some upper windows; in others a reflection of the moon denoted that unbroken glass yet filled their ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... and decrepit beggar, who had just dragged himself with slow and weary steps to this spot, begged an alms in the professional whine common to his class. The Caliph gave him a small piece of silver, and then watched him as he crossed the road and entered a dilapidated and wretched hovel, which stood close by the outer wall of the house of ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin

... of his "Surgery," mentions the case of a man who presented himself at Dupuytren's clinic with a tumefied, thickened, and somewhat dilapidated and ulcerated prepuce; this prepuce had worn a couple of golden padlocks for five years, a woman having thus infibulated ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... by the French but vacated more than a year ago and now very dilapidated, formed the accommodation. In them Christmas dinners, to procure which Bennett had proceeded early from the line, were eaten. And ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... noisy and bright as in the afternoon, they all made a bee-line for the gambling den, headed by Archie, who surprised the others with his certainty and confidence as to which was the right direction. In a very few minutes they all stood in front of the dilapidated structure built out over tide-water, and Archie heard one of the detectives say that the place looked "mighty suspicious like." He gave three knocks just as the dark man had done in the afternoon, and in a few minutes the door was cautiously ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison

... confidence in Russia's economic prospects. Nevertheless, serious problems persist. Oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80% of exports, leaving the country vulnerable to swings in world prices. Russia's manufacturing base is dilapidated and must be replaced or modernized if the country is to achieve broad-based economic growth. Other problems include a weak banking system, a poor business climate that discourages both domestic and foreign investors, corruption, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... now but little more than five-and-forty. There were still times when he was of a genial enough aspect, but, for the most part, he had an extremely dilapidated and disagreeable appearance. ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler

... Missouri, and at a bend in the river which formed an obtuse angle, and covered about six acres of land. The village was surrounded with a stockade made of timbers set vertically in the ground, and about ten feet high, but then in a dilapidated state. ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... Hogan was rather dilapidated in appearance. Trusting to luck instead of labor, he had had a hard time, as he might have expected. His flannel shirt was ragged and his nether garments showed the ravages of time. In the race his hat had dropped off and ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... The men had had one large room and one small apartment, where were located a dilapidated bed and a small writing table. On the table lay some writing material and several scraps of paper, but they were ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... to undertake more ambitious farming ventures. At length, under God's favor, and thanks to his own and his wife's efficiency, he had been able three years earlier to buy from the pecuniarily embarrassed Count Marazzani the latter's old and somewhat dilapidated country seat with a vineyard attached. He, his wife, and his children were comfortably settled upon this patrician estate, though with no pretence to patrician splendor. All these successes were ultimately due to the hundred and fifty gold pieces that Casanova had presented to Amalia, ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... the immense sources of wealth to be found in Jamaica, an intelligent eye-witness says: "Such are some of the natural resources of this dilapidated and poverty-stricken country. Capable as it is of producing almost every thing, and actually producing nothing which might not become a staple with a proper application of capital and skill, its inhabitants are miserably poor, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... but I thought the mingled squalor, luxuriance and beauty of these women were pointedly in harmony with the rest of the scene— so striking, in the view, was the mixture of natural riches and human poverty. The houses were mostly in a dilapidated condition, and signs of indolence and neglect were visible everywhere. The wooden palings which surrounded the weed-grown gardens were strewn about and broken; hogs, goats, and ill-fed poultry wandered in and out through ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... side of the cart-track by the gate was an old boot thrown away, and it served me for something to keep my eyes engaged. The dilapidated black object among the stones and wild plants on that day of strange mixed beauty was as incongruous as this unhappy woman herself revisiting her youth. And there shot into my mind a vision of this spot as it might have been that summer night when she had "the moon in her blood"—queer ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... born at Kaimes Castle, a kind of dilapidated baronial residence to which a small farm was then attached, rented by his Father, in the Isle of Bute,—on the 20th July, 1806. Both his parents were Irish by birth, Scotch by extraction; and became, as he himself did, essentially ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... of a dilapidated dwelling in which I had spent the whole night, and scrambled away over some rocks. When I sat down my legs were hanging over a chasm at the foot of which grandly rolling waves burst into foam, keeping up the warfare waged during a million ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... and of the (first) Venetian printed edition in his epistola dedicatoria leaves even doubt as to whether his authority was handwritten or printed. A first edition, printed ca. 1483, may have well been a dilapidated copy such as Torinus describes in 1529. Torinus admits taking some liberties with the text and failed to understand some phrases of it. Despite this fact, his text, from a culinary point of view seems to be more authentic than the ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... us with his dilapidated cart, when we immediately commenced repairing it, and getting ready for our ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... old-fashioned house, standing in its own grounds, about ten miles from Smokeytown. It was much dilapidated, for Miss Clare the owner and occupier, had not the necessary means for repairing it, and as she had lived there from her birth—a period of nearly sixty years—did not like to have the old place pulled down. Not more than half the rooms were habitable, and in one of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... bitter winter's midnight, on the road running between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly felt the deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in a leaning, dilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the extremities of both feet. Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out the four acts of the gladness, and the one long, and as yet uncatastrophied fifth act of the grief of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... dilapidated vehicle owned by old Ben had been the joke of the town for many a year his allusion was understood by Mrs. Morrison; so that she found herself also laughing as she in imagination saw the astonishment of the neighbors should such a thing occur, which, of course, was about as likely as ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster

... to rest the party. A strong south-east wind blew during the night, and the day was cool and clear; the air very dry. Repaired our saddle-bags, which, from frequent contact with rocks and dead trees, were much dilapidated. ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... jolly shipwrights held in their hall after service at St. Dunstan's, Stepney. The hall is now pulled down, and the Company, which is one of the smallest, worth an income of less than a thousand, has never built another. Then there are the Ratcliff Stairs—rather dirty and dilapidated to look at, but, at half-tide, affording the best view one can get anywhere of the Pool and the shipping. In the good old days of the scuffle-hunters and the heavy horsemen, the view of the thousand ships moored in their long lines with the narrow passage between was ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... that any good thing could be in store for them, the burgesses and others assembled, and crowded into the place of meeting. Twenty-two delegates from the eleven plantations were there, clad in their dingy and dilapidated raiment, and wide-brimmed hats; most of them with swords at their sides, and some with rusty muskets in their hands. Their cheeks were lank and their faces sunburned; their bearing was listless, yet marked with some touch of curiosity ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... care; filled with leaves and broken and torn by the wind, it looked dilapidated. We worked hard, and in a few days it was again habitable. My wife now begged that I would start her with the flax, and as early as possible I built a drying-oven, and then prepared the flax for her use; I also, after some trouble, manufactured a beetle-reel and spinning ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... contrived to get the bag, which weighed about half a hundredweight, on my back, and I walked off with it, Grumble following me with the copper and the other small bag, which I afterward found contained copper nails. When we arrived at his dwelling, which was as dilapidated and miserable as old Nanny's, he took out his key and fumbled a long while at the lock; at last he opened it. "You had better stay till I get a light," said he. In a minute he came with one to the door, and told me to follow him. I went in, put down the bag, and, some grains ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... one rug on the floor, a dilapidated affair that might well be the flayed hide of a flea-bitten mule. There is a mantlepiece, stretching across what used to be a fireplace in the days of the First Napoleon, but which is a fireplace no more. On top of the mantlepiece is a lot of dry reading—wicked-looking little ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces

... of Laibach, convened to put down revolutionary ideas, was extremely angry at the conduct of Ypsilanti, and, against all expectation, stood aloof. This was the time for him to attack Turkey, then weakened and dilapidated; but he was tired of war. Among the Greeks the wildest enthusiasm prevailed, especially throughout the Morea, the ancient Peloponnesus. The peasants everywhere gathered around their chieftains, and drove away the Turkish soldiers, inflicting on them ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... to be met with in the Cuban churches, unless upon festal occasions. The men manifest their indifference by their absence, and white women are scarcely represented. Besides the cathedral, Santiago has three or four other old churches, small and dilapidated, within whose sombre walls one seems to have stepped back into the fifteenth century. Upon strolling accidentally into one of these we felt a chill suffuse the whole system, like that realized on descending into a dark, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... the outside the place had a dilapidated look that surprised Lindsay. The bell was of that brand you keep pulling till you discover it is out of order. Decayed gentility marked the neighborhood, though the blank front of the ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine

... articles—the whole sufficient to afford provision for such a party as ours for about six or eight months if well administered. In case of necessity this would undoubtedly be a very useful reserve to fall back upon. These stores are somewhat scattered, and the hut has a dilapidated, comfortless appearance due to its tenantless condition; but even so it seemed to me much less inviting than our old Discovery ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... he longed, but only lived to realize for four brief months. All the best Field wrote previous to 1890—and it includes the best he ever wrote, except "The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac"—was written in a room to which many a box stall is palatial, and his sole library was a dilapidated edition of Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations," Cruden's "Concordance of the Bible," and a well-thumbed copy of the King James version of the Bible. He detested the revised version. The genius of this man at this time did not depend on scholarship ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... crooked pin from somewhere about his dilapidated garments, and fastened the roll of bills as securely as he could inside the lining of his jacket, keeping the silver in his pocket. Then he again examined the book to be sure that he had overlooked nothing. On the inside of the leather was ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... disused and partly dilapidated, but many wonderful tales existed among the neighboring habitans of a secret passage that communicated with the vaults of the Chateau; but no one had ever seen the passage—still less been bold enough to explore it had they found it, for it was guarded by a loup-garou ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... certain new windows had been added; these could be detected by the observant eye for they had a markedly older appearance than the rest. The front-door, similarly, seemed as if it must have been made years before the house, the fact being that the one which Mrs Lucas had found there was too dilapidated to be of the slightest service in keeping out wind or wet or undesired callers. She had therefore caused to be constructed an even older one made from the oak-planks of a dismantled barn, and had it studded with large iron nails of antique pattern made ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... called the sods—where the trees can't grow because of high winds. This particular spot is called Foley Sods after the Foleys who have lived here in the Dug Down Mountains for generations. Looking closer from the high, green bald you can see far below in the edge of a dilapidated orchard a lorn grave. Overrun with ivy and thorns it is enclosed with a wire fence, sagging and rusty and held together here and there with ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... who now enters, is a stone-cutter and mason, much employed in patching dilapidated graves and cutting inscriptions, and popularly known in Bumsteadville, on account of the dried mortar perpetually hanging about him, as "Old Mortarity." He is a ricketty man, with a chronic disease ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various

... into the dining-room immediately, which looked still more dismal in its dilapidated state, when it was lighted up; while the table, covered with choice dishes, the beautiful china and glass, and the plate, which had been found in the hole in the wall where its owner had hidden it, gave the look of a bandit's inn, where they were supping after committing a robbery, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... The dilapidated cloisters, littered with old casks, farm implements, and the like, preserve ample traces of their former architectural character, and the Louis Quatorze gateway on the northern side of the inclosure still displays ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... complaining of their weight, and threatening to precipitate them to the regions below. Opening the door of a little box of a room, out of which the hot air came rushing like a blast from a furnace fire, the porter placed the lamp upon a dilapidated wash-stand and the valise upon the floor, and without uttering a ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... even upon the stage during the play, though not so commonly as before the Restoration, yet still too much; and the players played as best they could, and where best they could. Billets-doux passed, sweet words were said,—all in this dilapidated, ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... 1990 and 1992 Albania ended 46 years of xenophobic Communist rule and established a multiparty democracy. The transition has proven challenging as successive governments have tried to deal with high unemployment, widespread corruption, a dilapidated physical infrastructure, powerful organized crime networks, and combative political opponents. Albania has made progress in its democratic development since first holding multiparty elections in 1991, but deficiencies remain. International ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... quarter of Prague represents a remarkable labyrinth of crooked and narrow streets; it is situated in the outskirts of Prague which witnessed numerous bloody episodes of Bohemian and German history. The dwellers of the dirty and dilapidated houses of this quarter are engaged in petty trading and profiteering in their own as well as in other parts of the city. Prague is the only city in Germany where the Jews live entirely isolated from the nation whose name they have taken in order to avail themselves of the privileges of the city ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein

... workmen in the neighbourhood of Rome were employed in clearing away the ruins of a dilapidated chapel, they found a broken mass of sculptured marble among the rubbish. The fragments, when put together, proved to be a statue representing a person of venerable aspect sitting in a chair, on the back of which were the names of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... had one small window, before which hung a dilapidated shutter by a rusty hinge. The door opened, Billy knew, into a little passage from which the room door opened, and from which a rickety ladder led up to a loft, unused and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... the trees, but the suggestion was all of summer heat. There was a watering-trough and hitching-rail directly opposite, a little to one side of Hemmenway's feed-store, and there a well-fed mare stood, drooping dejectedly between the shafts of a dilapidated buggy. On the corner was a two-storey brick building with large plate-glass windows on the ground floor for the display of intimate articles of feminine apparel. The black and gold sign above proclaimed it: "The Fair. Dry Goods & Notions. Leonard & Call." Duncan considered it with ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... daughter, and whose kindness she repaid by writing his biography. However the venture might come out, we would think her life could not well be harder or less attractive than it had been, drudging in a dilapidated farm house, and we are glad she is well out of it. Strange to say, she did not take our view of the situation. We have already seen how independent she was of external circumstances. In a letter referred to, dated May 27, she chides ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... A faint light shone from the window. It stood unfenced by any kind of hedge or railing a few feet away from the road in a little hollow beneath some rising ground. As far as they could discern in the darkness when they drew near, the house was a mean, dilapidated hovel. A guttering candle stood on the inner sill of the small window and afforded a vague view into a mean interior. Doyne held up the lamp so that its rays fell full on the door. As he did so, an exclamation broke from his lips and he hurried forward, followed by ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke

... him with keen interest. If the interior of the room was a little dilapidated, it was full of the remains of past magnificence. The walls were still covered with fine tapestry, of which the design was almost obliterated, although the texture and colouring still remained. The furniture was huge, and of the fashion of days gone by, and the bedstead was elaborately carved ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... said here, but it is worth noting that one live purple emperor has been captured in Ampfield wood, two dead dilapidated ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... known, from this circumstance, to my uncles and the older inhabitants of the town, as Marcus's Cave. My companions, however, had been chiefly drawn to it by a much more recent association. A poor Highland pensioner—a sorely dilapidated relic of the French-American War, who had fought under General Wolfe in his day—had taken a great fancy to the cave, and would fain have made it his home. He was ill at ease in his family;—his wife was a termagant, and his daughter disreputable; and, desirous to quit their society altogether, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... with the terrors of another interdict hanging over his head (November 12th), the King restored the archiepiscopal lands, the rents had been previously levied, the corn and cattle had been carried off, and the buildings were left in a dilapidated state. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... spake, an' that, mark you, has not come about wid a draf' in the mlm'ry av livin' man! You look to that little orf'cer bhoy. He has bowils. 'Tis not ivry child that wud chuck the Rig'lations to Flanders an' stretch Peg Barney on a wink from a brokin an' dilapidated ould carkiss like mysilf. I'd ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling

... heights on which La Turbia stands, with its dilapidated walls, we see the beautiful city of Monaco, on a tongue of land extending ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... earlier and was later surrounded by a moat as a further means of defense. Considering its age, it is in a wonderfully good state of preservation, the original roof still being intact. We were admitted by the keeper, who lives in the dilapidated but delightfully picturesque half-timbered gatehouse. The most notable feature of the old house is the banqueting hall occupying the greater portion of the first floor, showing how, in the good old days, provision for hospitality took precedence over nearly everything ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... the train, as he had no umbrella, but there was no help for it. He leaped off the platform of the car almost before it had stopped, and looked for a place of shelter. He was surprised to see several large buildings in front of him, but even through the mist of rain he noted that they were dilapidated and forsaken. He was in the midst ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis

... dilapidated frame building, whose rude accommodations differed widely from those to which, save during his army life, Boyd had been ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley

... match between her friend, Harriet Atkinson and a young scion of an ancient and haughty family of Charleston, and how after the marriage her friend's health had begun to give way, until now she was an utter wreck, living alone in a dilapidated antebellum mansion, seeing no one but negro servants, and praying for death to relieve her ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... Strait; but the ships in company being able to supply us the delay was avoided. Since our last visit, the book at the Post Office, on Booby Island, had been destroyed by some mischievous visitors, and the box was in a very dilapidated state. We repaired the latter, and left a new book with a supply of ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... proposed to put his office, his books, and his own workroom. Above these rooms were three narrow little chambers pushed up against the party-wall, with an outlook into the court; here he intended to dwell. The three rooms were dilapidated, and had no view but that of the court, which was dark, irregular, and surrounded by high walls, to which perpetual dampness, even in dry weather, gave the look of being daubed with fresh plaster. Between the stones of this court was a filthy and stinking black substance, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... put a little money. He hired a small flat in Brooklyn, on the top floor, so that he had a glimpse of the harbor from his sitting-room windows. He spent the last of his ready money in buying out the dilapidated furniture of his predecessor; and then with the assistance of the janitor's wife, who gave him his breakfast and did what she called "redding up the place," he began to live on the slim salary that ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller

... as well as to reclaim such of their own race as had recently embraced Christianity. A great scandal was occasioned also by the inter-marriages, which still occasionally took place between Jews and Christians; the latter condescending to repair their dilapidated fortunes by these wealthy alliances, though at the expense of their vaunted purity of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... Duck came to a little miserable peasant's hut. This hut was so dilapidated that it did not know on which side it should fall; and that's why it remained standing. The storm whistled round the Duckling in such a way that the poor creature was obliged to sit down, to stand against it; and the tempest grew worse and ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... the cook, for she had no jewellery on at all and no fine clothes, while the two girls, the daughters, were quite smart. They were all ready to laugh and smile, but the two girls were the most friendly; they sat down by Joyce and fingered her skirt and examined her very dilapidated shoes. "I wish they wouldn't, Jim," she said, trying to pull them up under her very short skirt, which was no use at all. At last she took them off because they were so wet, and one of the girls put her ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... opened immediately,' he said. 'There is nobody but a very dilapidated female to perform such offices. You will excuse her infirmities? If she were in a more elevated station of society, she would be gouty. Being but a hewer of wood and drawer of water, she is rheumatic. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... naturally on war, and in naval warfare I found I had come upon Davies's literary hobby. I had not hitherto paid attention to the medley on our bookshelf, but I now saw that, besides a Nautical Almanack and some dilapidated Sailing Directions, there were several books on the cruises of small yachts, and also some big volumes crushed in anyhow or lying on the top. Squinting painfully at them I saw Mahan's Life of Nelson, Brassey's Naval Annual, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... room, found a pen and ink upon my dilapidated writing-table, wrote an order on my banker, and came back again. At any price I was resolved to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... hay-cart, but a spidery trap, with high wheels, so called—and a dilapidated buggy were placed at their disposal. Two children and the old nurse remained to follow in the coach, and the advance guard started, after an anxious consultation as to whether the wheel of the buggy could be trusted to revolve ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... a modern town, with the usual broad, straight streets, most of them boasting no other pavement than sand, with brick side-walks, much worn and dilapidated, and, like those of Buenos Ayres and many other American cities, so raised above the roadway as to require great attention from those who do not wish to run ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... to execute. But they are not well kept. The rozah, or courtyard, in which the great king lies sleeping, surrounded by his wives, his children and other members of his family and his favorite ministers, is not cared for. It is dirty and dilapidated. ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... George, with seven emaciated Arabs and five dilapidated camels, crawled into Omdurman, bringing Richard Stanton's young widow, their arrival made a sensation for all Egypt. Later, in Khartoum, when the history of the murder and the subsequent march ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... the fragments of feathers and ribbons with which the unlucky shot had strewn him, and placed them slyly on the top of the dilapidated hat, which Baptiste, after clearing away the wreck, had replaced on ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... Spring their old haunts are in a more or less dilapidated condition according to the number of successful visits the German aviators have chosen to pay us during the Winter, and I fancy that this upsets them a trifle. For hundreds of generations they have been accustomed to nest in the pinions of certain ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... kitchen-gardens at the Court in her father's time, when the whole extent of "glass" was comprised by a couple of dilapidated cucumber-frames, and a queer little greenhouse in a corner, where she and her brother had made some primitive experiments in horticulture, and where there was a particular race of spiders, the biggest specimens of the spidery species it had ever been her horror ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... Hobart Town was turned to account to complete the stock of provisions, anchors, and other very requisite articles, and also to repair the vessel and the rigging, the latter being sorely dilapidated. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... the dilapidated earl imported as a parti, was of opinion that the Austrian count had merely applied for the viatique; and being granted by the management a sum large enough to pay his fare and his food, had departed without caring to show his face again at ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... were whirling along the straight, white road between the interminable black vineyards, and past the dilapidated homesteads of the vine-folk and wayside cafes that are scattered about this unjoyous ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... a dilapidated bedstead, on which lay the sick woman. Drawn from under it was a trundle bed, upon which lay two small children, who had evidently been put to bed at that early hour to keep them warm, for the temperature of ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... banks of the river, and another on an island, that to the east having been inhabited by the Mahommedans, the other by idolators. He found the place, however, in a most ruinous condition, even the mosque itself being in a dilapidated state. Indeed, the once great city of Negroland now consists only of from three to four hundred huts, grouped in separate clusters and surrounded by heaps of rubbish, which indicated its former site. Here it is believed that Mungo ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... o'clock that afternoon, Scott found himself entering an ancient and dilapidated looking block in a rather disreputable part of the city. He had fulfilled his appointment with Mr. Sutherland, and after an hour's conversation both gentlemen appeared very sanguine regarding the case under consideration. ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... observed, that in his progress to the tea-table, Mr. Tiffany adopted a tottering and uncertain step, indicating a dilapidated old age, only kept together by the clothes he wore, which was altogether unintelligible to the Peabody family, seeing that Mr. Carrack was in the very prime of youth, till Mrs. Carrack remarked, with an affectionate ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews

... by the large manufacturers, until an energetic man built a factory in our village, and paid them better wages. As the population then increased, and consequently the number of patients, space was wanting in which to house them, for the dilapidated Poor-house—whither they were carried—was no longer large enough to accommodate them all. Therefore the parish, aided by the owner of the factory, built a hospital for the whole district, and the site of the old Poor-house was chosen for it. The beautiful nut-trees which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... owners, remained tenantless, and went to ruin. Valverde,[27] a Creole of the island, is the chronicler of its condition in the middle of the eighteenth century. He observes that the Spanish Creoles were living in such poverty that mass was said before daylight, so that mutual scandal at dilapidated toilets might not interfere with the enjoyment of religion. The leprosy was common, and two lazarettos were filled with its victims. The negro blood had found its way into almost every family; a female slave received ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... tail to a Guildhall? Though the word used by moderns, would mayor convey to Cicero the idea of a mayor? Architectus, I believe, is the right word; but I doubt whether veteris jam perantiquae is classic for a dilapidated building—but do not depend on me; ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... a most dilapidated condition, and it—also the country about—looks as though it had been the scene of a fierce bombardment. And bombarded we certainly have been—by a terrific hailstorm that made us feel for a time that our very lives were in danger. The day had been excessively ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... arrival of the bus which was as laughable as the chief dispatcher's philosophizing. The dented and rusty vehicle had been disencumbered of its motor and was hitched to four mules who seemed less than enthusiastic over their lot. I got in and seated myself gingerly on one of the dilapidated seats, noting that the warning signs "For White" and "For Colored" had been smeared over with just enough paint to make the intent of obliteration clear ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... to keep him in view and saw him spring up the steps of a dilapidated tenement house. The man ran through the lower hallway and into the back yard, piled high with rubbish of all kinds. Here he ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.

... misgivings as to whether we would be admitted at all - I might almost say hopes - but the Gay Cat succeeded in getting a ready response at the basement door. The house itself was the dilapidated ruin of what had once been a fashionable residence in the days when society lived in the then suburban Bowery. The iron handrail on the steps was still graceful, though rusted and insecure. The stones of the steps were decayed and eaten away by time, and ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... must be secured. 7. The slender greyhound was released. 8. The cold November rain is falling. 9. That valuable English watch has been sold. 10. I alone have escaped. 11. Both positions can be defended. 12. All such discussions should have been avoided. 13. That dilapidated old ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... to the pier and watched the last ropes cast loose. The ship was not large, and even in the dark it seemed dingy and dilapidated. He guessed that, big or small, this boat would carry her crew to some distant quarter of the world, and therefore to ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... itself, was a peculiar way for a young woman to spend an evening. She would have done it, he felt, if he had been half his actual age. God help the man with a fancy for her! Charming visions were woven on his memory from the fading skeins of the past—a ride in a dilapidated, public fiacre after a masked ball in Paris ... at dawn. Confetti tangled in coppery hair, a wilful mouth, fragrantly painted, and phantomlike swans on a black lake. His silk hat had been telescoped in the process of smacking ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... battle-field and reduced a large part of the city to ashes. The Court nobles, with their wives and children, had to seek shelter and refuge within the Imperial palace, the fences of which were broken down and the buildings sadly dilapidated. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... Court. In the centre a new fountain with two dragons supplied the Ghetto with water from the Aqueduct of Paul the Fifth in lieu of the loathly Tiber water, and bore a grateful Latin inscription. About the edges of the square a few buildings rose in dilapidated splendor to break the monotony of the Ghetto barracks; the ancient palace of the Boccapaduli, and a mansion with a high tower and three abandoned churches. A monumental but forbidding gate, closed at sundown, gave access to ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... fort is a small unimportant temple, now much dilapidated, which is considered as very sacred by the Hindoos. To their great sorrow they are not allowed to visit it, as the fort is not open to them. One of the officers told me that, a short time since, a very rich Hindoo made a pilgrimage here, and offered ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... as she steps without the door, or throwing mud-balls into the open windows; no brazen, neglected girls to call her low names, or pin dirty rags upon her gown as she walks about the premises; and then every thing within the walls is so clean and nice—no threatening cracks in the white ceilings; no dilapidated walls to totter, or worn planks to shake at every tread; no half-starved rats, stalking about seeking somewhat to devour; and no odious effluvia from the waste lot, or the stagnant pond, stopping ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... sat on my cake and mashed it," moaned Joyce, as she moved over to make a place for the dilapidated old bandbox. "How do you suppose we're ever going to get home with such a mixture of frosted cakes and puppies and chickens, and all the keepsakes that those boys piled on to us at ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... erection of new temples. Its notion is that it is better to maintain the existing temples adequately. When I went to see a gorgeous new temple, I found that official permission for its erection had been obtained because the figures, vessels and some of the fittings of an old and dilapidated temple were to be used in the new edifice. This temple was on a large tract of land which had recently been recovered from the sea. The building had cost between 80,000 and 90,000 yen. It stood on piles on rising ground and had a secondary purpose ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... poverty was our first impression of Spain. For some distance the train had been running through a region apparently unfertile, where fences of sharp spined cacti enclosed small fields. The people were shabbily dressed, the houses straw-thatched and dilapidated, and the little patches of land poorly cultivated. It seemed that Sunday was a common wash-day; for at almost every cottage the family wash was hanging in the sun on trees, ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... barricaded door. Spears had been thrust and darted through, blows struck through cracks and holes with krises and the deadly sword-like parang, and in spite of the fierce and slowly-sustained fire kept up, the defences were rapidly becoming more dilapidated, and several fresh ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... Berri were inoculated. I visited this mansion, thinking it might be suitable for my family; but, notwithstanding the beauty of its situation, it seemed far too splendid either for my taste or my fortune. Except the outer walls, it was in a very dilapidated state, and would require numerous and expensive repairs. Josephine, being informed that Madame de Bourrienne had set her face against the purchase, expressed a wish to see the mansion, and accompanied us for that purpose. She was so much delighted with it that she blamed my wife for ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... camp-chairs still standing on the lawn, and children's toys were scattered over the veranda. The boy's rough feet as he carried in her trunk annihilated the face of a smart French doll, and Miss Featherstone's dress caught on, and was torn by, a nail in a dilapidated rocking-horse. The light came from a picturesque-looking lamp which hung from an arch in the centre of a broad, low hall. She rang the bell: the sound reverberated through the house, yet no one came. The boy, who had stood the trunk on end, growing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... shabby house of two stories, with a wide front. It looked dilapidated and neglected, but except that it was in an unsavory neighborhood there was nothing to draw attention to it, or lead to the impression that it was the haunt ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.

... joyous than at present. I regret to say that they are daily growing more and more faint, being gradually worn away by time, but still more obliterated by modern fashion. They resemble those picturesque morsels of Gothic architecture which we see crumbling in various parts of the country, partly dilapidated by the waste of ages, and partly lost in the additions and alterations of latter days. Poetry, however, clings with cherishing fondness about the rural game and holiday revel, from which it has derived so many of its themes—as the ivy winds its rich foliage about the Gothic arch and mouldering ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving

... of the past. We visited the square in which Joan of Arc was burned; a small irregular area in front of her prison; the prison itself, and the hall in which she had been condemned. All these edifices are Gothic, quaint, and some of them sufficiently dilapidated. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... his pocket and scratched the back of his head, tilting his hat as far forward as it had previously been to the rear, and just then the dilapidated side of his right boot attracted his attention. He turned the foot on one side, and squinted at the sole; then he raised the foot to his left knee, caught the ankle in a very dirty hand, and regarded the sole-leather critically, as though calculating how long it would last. After ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... this love affair, which was assuming dramatic proportions, could be long kept from the knowledge of Napoleon. The mocking critics of the camp and the stern moralists amongst the civilians vied with each other in babbling commentary of the growing dilapidated reputation that the Commander-in-Chief's wife was precipitately acquiring. Wherever she is or goes, so long as Bonaparte is at a safe distance, Charles is hanging on to her skirts. Some writers have said that on the occasion of her visit to Genoa ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... but decided to err on the safe side, and gave a very moderate and conservative rap. Silence. A louder knock. The door rattled. Louder still. The whole building shook. Knuckles filed a caveat. Applied the heel of the dilapidated boot in her hand. Suffocated with a cloud of dust thence ensuing. Contemplated the nature of things for a while. Heard a voice. A man called from a neighboring turnip-field, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... the Duck came to a little miserable peasant's hut. This hut was so dilapidated that it did not itself know on which side it should fall; and that's why it remained standing. The storm whistled round the Duckling in such a way that the poor creature was obliged to sit down, to stand against it; and the wind blew worse ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... reached the bottom of the hill, and had turned the corner, a broad, well-made stone bridge confronted us. On the other side of this was an old-fashioned country inn, with its signboard dangling from the house front, and opposite it again a dilapidated cottage lolling beside two iron gates. The gates were eight feet or more in height, made of finely wrought iron, and supported by big stone posts, on the top of which two stone animals—griffins, I believe they are called—holding shields in their claws, looked down ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... dilapidated building, was in a bystreet convenient to the harbour. The front door stood open, and a couple of seamen lounging on the broken steps made way for him civilly as he entered and rapped on the bare boards with his stick. Mr. Smith, clattering ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... crisp air of late autumn spurred her to action, and she kept on running, with the letter burning her hand like flame, so tightly did she grip it. Before she reached the broken and dilapidated fence separating the home place of Stoneledge from the trail, she paused beneath a tree to take breath and reconnoitre. She looked at the letter then for the first time, and she was sure it was from Sandy. Her heart beat painfully ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... boughs compelled me to adopt a stooping posture. One of these paths led to a clearing in which I found footsteps upon the wet grass. I followed them; they led me to the foot of a mound which was surmounted by a deserted, dilapidated hovel. ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... attack we might have been meditating had been nipped in the bud. Their rifle fire also slackened perceptibly, although it continued until daybreak much heavier than their usual night firing. On comparing notes, we found that two, if not three, machine-guns, had disclosed themselves in the dilapidated length of F12 between our barricade and the "shell-holed" tree—a portion of the trench which we had hitherto regarded as entirely abandoned—and that there were more of them in the same trench between the tree and the small nullah; the exact positions could not however ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... three specimens is somewhat curious. With the exception of two in the Museum at Copenhagen, obtained many years ago by Professor Thomsen from a convent in Rome, and, though greatly dilapidated, presenting some traces of the game kind of ornamentation, they ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... own mind to be put into words, but she had said nothing to any one until the morning of the day when she broached the subject to his father. Together with Grey, she had gone over the old house, which, from having been shut up so long, seemed more dilapidated than ever. But Grey opposed her plan, and Hannah opposed it, while Mr. Jerrold grew hot and cold by turns, as he thought what might possibly be brought to light if the house were removed and any excavations made, as there might be. As if divining what was ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... desolate old shed now. We left our donkeys to eat thistles in front, while we climbed up some dilapidated steps, and entered the crumbling hall. The present occupants are half a dozen monks, and fine fellows too, who have an orphan school of some twenty lads. We were invited to witness their noonday prayers. The flat-roofed rear buildings extend round an oblong, quadrangular space, which is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... white stucco front, badly cracked all over,—evidently a sort of old manor house of about the period of George IV,—and the sight of the smart motor cars drawn up on either side of the road in front of its partly dilapidated gate, seemed but to enhance the general impression of decay which characterised both the house and ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... was anything on the dilapidated premises that could cheer or encourage it was Rosie. With the enforced rest and seclusion following on her fruitless dash to escape, her prettiness had become more delicate, less worn. Shame at her folly had put into her greenish ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... or I may be wrong. Thanks to the dilapidated condition of a lock, I can decide the question, at the first opportunity offered to me by the nurse's absence from ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins



Words linked to "Dilapidated" :   damaged



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