moss-grown
Part of speech: adj
Morphological type: compound
Etymology: From moss + grown. Sense 2 (“old; old-fashioned, out of date”) refers to the fact that moss will often grow on an object that has remained outdoors in one place for some time.
Compound parts: moss
grown
Inflected forms:
form: more moss-grown
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most moss-grown
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: mossgrown
pos: adj
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: Having a covering of growing moss.
pos: adj
examples: Diſeaſed nature oftentimes breakes forth, / In ſtrange eruptions, oft the teeming earth / Is with a kind of collicke pincht and vext, / By the impriſoning of vnruly wind / Within her vvombe, vvhich for enlargement ſtriuing / Shakes the old Beldame earth, and topples down / Steeples and moſſegrovvn towers.
In theſe lone walls (their days eternal bound) / Theſe moſs-grown domes with ſpiry turrets crown'd, / Where awful arches make a noon-day night, / And the dim windows ſhed a ſolemn light; / Thy eyes diffus'd a reconciling ray, / And gleams of glory brighten'd all the day.
In one spot distinguished by a moss-grown gothic monument, which retained the name of Queen's Standing, Elizabeth herself was said to have pierced seven bucks with her own arrows.
[A]ll these objects were as well known to me as the cold hearth of my deserted home, and every moss-grown wall and plot of orchard ground, alike as twin lambs are to each other in a stranger's eye, yet to my accustomed gaze bore differences, distinction, and a name.
As we pass onward, we catch the amusing incidents by the way, explore the villages, meditate among their grave yards, and pluck the grass away from the moss grown head stones to decypher the names of those who sleep beneath.
Immediately beyond the bridge, on the right-hand side of the road, a rusty iron gate, between solid but mouldy stone pillars, surmounted with mossgrown stone balls, imparted an air of yet lingering importance to what had once been a well-kept walled garden, […]
Stumps and logs, like precious monuments, adorned its two streets, each stump and log, on account of the moist climate, moss-grown and tufted with grass and bushes, but muddy on the sides below the limit of the bogline.
gloss: Old; old-fashioned, out of date.
pos: adj
tags: figuratively
examples: To find one's self suddenly translated from the wild, flowery prairie into the heart of an aged, moss-grown village, of such foreign aspect, withal, was by no means easy to reconcile with one's notions of reality.
It was reserved for chivalry, embodying the spirit of christianity, to demolish this old, moss-grown bastile of the social state, and restore its captives to freedom, and the rights and prerogatives of freedom.
The native State of Patrick Henry Hanway was a moss-grown member of the republic and had been one of the original thirteen. It possessed with other impedimenta a moss-grown aristocracy that borrowed money, devoured canvasbacks, drank burgundy, wore spotless tow in summer, clung to the duello, and talked of days of greatness which had been before the war. It carried moss-grown laws upon its statute books [...]
[T]he magnificent young poet [Alfred, Lord Tennyson] of the bust by [Thomas] Woolner in Trinity College Library had grown gradually more like, if never really like, the dim and moss-grown mystic of the painting by [George Frederic] Watts in Trinity College Hall.
Related words: grass-grown
Translations: