Literary notes about decrepit (AI summary)
The term “decrepit” in literature often conveys the inevitable decline of age, evoking images of physical decay and faded vitality. Writers use it to describe not only the worn-out nature of people—as in characters depicted as “old, decrepit” and diminished in spirit [1] or vulnerable figures like the “decrepit old steward” [2]—but also to suggest the deterioration of institutions and objects, such as a once-proud structure now reduced to a “cracked and decrepit” state [3]. In some works, the state of being decrepit becomes a marker for both human frailty and societal decay, contrasting with themes of rejuvenation and resistance to time’s toll [4]. Authors thus employ the term to enrich their narratives, grounding abstract ideas of loss, neglect, and the relentless passage of time in vivid, tangible imagery [5] [6].
- In both, the heroes start as old, decrepit, and very ugly men.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Bronislaw Malinowski - At the end of the principal garden-walk, in a little house, once the bath-house, lived a decrepit old steward.
— from The Jew and Other Stories by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev - The New Building, which was the most cracked and decrepit thing to be seen anywhere in the world, was the weak point in the prison.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - This is the true fountain of youth, for there the old and decrepit become young, active, and lusty.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais - [Pg 82] tion maintained solely by the village for the old and decrepit of both sexes, and this place would have done credit to a European city.
— from From Paris to New York by Land by Harry De Windt - The sceptre she hath wrested from the heathen is fast dropping from her decrepit and fleshless grasp.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales by Bret Harte
