What’s the word for “decaying”?
Imagine an old map, a map with a path to a treasure, like the ones you remember from cartoons. The map’s partially destroyed, because it’s in good condition and it has been exposed to air, heat, water, and people touching it, you name it.
What is the problem with the paper? What is the best verb to describe what? I mean the proces of paper getting thinner and more delicate, to the point where a touch can make it turn into powder. Does paper decay? What is the process of decomposing organic matter? What happens when bacteria “feed” organic matter? What is a “truth”?
What is it like I missed a step and how did your id work?
Exactly what age is the term for spotting
and foxing?
Paper rots if it gets damp, it yellows with age, and maybe it crumbles.
Fray:
v. X. On the edge of the girth, this means that the seam is folded away and becomes twisted. The opposite direction occurs: to unravel or become worn at the edge.
This word captures physical wearing but doesn’t relate to the organic decaying that some people will say about. I just want
to take up a suggestion. “Thank… very much.”
It is the fungus disease which attacks timber, also affects wallpaper) 1795 1. a. TO BE FORMULULAR,
SIDE OF LIGHTS ARE DEVIOUS PARTIFIC IT IS CURRENT & CONNECTIVE 2317 1. a. OWN EASE a decay of seasoned timber caused by fungi that consume the cellulose of wood leaving a soft skeleton which is readily reduced to powder
To decay in moisture, is to ret (also
rate) (retted, retting) 1 tr. Can soften (flax, hemp, etc.) by soaking or exposure to moisture. 2 Intr. Could horse hay be spoilt by rain?
What is a good time to buy a new car?
is a word which means that something has deteriorated to the point that a slight pressure can break it into pieces.
Fray:
v. X. On the edge of the girth, this means that the seam is folded away and becomes twisted. The opposite direction occurs: to unravel or become worn at the edge.
This word captures physical wearing but doesn’t relate to the organic decaying that some people will say about. I just want
to take up a suggestion. “Thank… very much.”
One word that I feel is particularly associated with age-related deterioration of paper-based products is…
moulder (US molder ) – slowly decay or disintegrate, especially because of neglect.
OxfordDctionaries example usage: ‘the smell of mouldering books’
Plus several examples from Google Books of “mouldered books”
is a word which means that something has deteriorated to the point that a slight pressure can break it into pieces.
40 Years of experience in printing and photography – we refer to paper ‘deteriorating’ in a physical process of ‘degradation’. Paper manufacturers have long known that acid in paper is one of the main causes of this process and alkaline papers are much more long lasting and less likely to yellow and age.
If we’re taking paper in mass production, we’ve been using alum sizes since 1999 and we still use them nowadays, but we’ve been cleaning their paper and not the waste. The same goes for sweat and it also creates lactic acid. Organisations dedicated to the preservation of paper based records use a process of alkaline washing to preserve valuable documents.
From Royal Society of Chemistry – Saving Paper: see the following
from Saving Paper. See the following from From Royal Society of Chemistry – Saving Paper (PDF): 21kb.
What are some very meaningful synonyms of this question? What are the words decay, decay, decompose, rot, putrefy and spoil? All of which “mean to undergo destructive dissolution”
DECOMPOSE stresses breaking down by chemical change and when applied to organic matter a corruption (“the strong odor of decomposing vegetation”). ROT is a synonym of DECOMPOSE and often connotes foulness (“fruit was left to rot in the warehouse”). In English there’s no rhyme which would be like but also (it’s not a myth) can have negative effects on ROT. PUTREFY implies the rotting of animal matter and offensiveness to sight and smell (“corpses putrefying on the battlefield”). SPOIL applies chiefly to the decomposition of foods (“”keep the ham from spoiling”).
S. I. Hayakawa, Choose the Right Word: A Modern Guide to Synonyms (1968), addressing the words rot, decay, decompose, molder, putrefy, and spoil, all of which refer to the breakdown of dead organic tissues by natural bacterial processes; Rot is the least formal and most forceful
of these words, suggesting an advanced point in this process of breakdown ; the tissues at this point might or might not be foul-smelling but in any case they would in any Spoil refers to a previous point in the process of organic breakdown; it is especially applied to foods that have turned “bad” or begun to turn. .
Does decay apply to the whole process of breakdown, including the end point of total destruction? Decompose is a more formal substitute for decay, but is almost clinical in its reference to a point in the process between spoil and rot at which point tissues may be distended and ruptured by a build-up of gases: .
. Putrefy refers to the same point of the process as decompose, stressing particularly the presence of foul or poisonous gases or noxious odors: . A molder might now be thought too precious or euphemistic a substitute for decay. It means to decay slowly and turn into dust. .
Merriam-Webster and Hayakawa seem to agree that decay is the broadest term since it takes the affected organic object from a state of fitness to one of dissolution. In other respects, Merriam-Webster focuses on the categories of objects that the various synonyms particularly apply to, while Hayakawa focuses on what he considers the Stage of Disintegration associated with each synonym.
The odd term out of molder, which Merriam-Webster ignores, and which Hayakawa considers potentially “too precious or euphemistic”—perhaps because (in 1968) the most familiar instance of molder to American English speakers was probably in the folk lyric “John Browns body lies a-moldering in the grave . … but to me, the process of gradual decay from wholeness to dust seems an especially appropriate to describe the gradual disintegration of paper, so I endorse FumbleFinger’s suggestion.
