toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

deteriorate
in a sentence

show 189 more with this conextual meaning
  • The rafts were beginning to deteriorate into jelly, and gave off a sour, burning odor.†   (source)
  • Beyond the last of the log shacks, however, the road rapidly deteriorated.†   (source)
  • I'd run around with my cousins, unaware of the ever-present poverty or Mamaw Blanton's deteriorating health.†   (source)
  • Whole blocks were abandoned, buildings blackened and hollowed out by fires set by arsonists—many of whom were in the employ of landlords looking to cash out of the deteriorating ghetto.†   (source)
  • When that happened at this level, things deteriorated quickly.†   (source)
  • After just a few weeks my body began to deteriorate.†   (source)
  • The doctors said he'd be left with a limp, one likely to get worse with age as the misshapen bones deteriorated.†   (source)
  • Now, as they sped away from the embassy, serpentining through sparse traffic on Champs-Elysées, Langdon felt his options deteriorating.†   (source)
  • But a decade later, the rapidly growing prison population inevitably led to a deterioration in the conditions of confinement.†   (source)
  • And of course I'm banging my knee and dropping my pencil and deteriorating into a pathetic pool of Jell-O. But I tried my best to sound cool as I said, "Hello, Granddad.†   (source)
  • As days turned into weeks and the likelihood of finding Father deteriorated, our situation became increasingly desperate.†   (source)
  • She must've been deteriorating for months, because her skin is cracked and bleeding everywhere, and I find myself wondering how the soldiers could have missed this one during previous inspections.†   (source)
  • There was no manifestation of contemporary culture that did not indicate to my grandmother how steadfast was the nation's decline, how merciless our mental and moral deterioration, how swiftly all-embracing our final decadence.†   (source)
  • I felt myself deteriorating.†   (source)
  • The aneurysm gradually deteriorates due to the constant pressure of the blood passing through it.†   (source)
  • Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a tall and freckled six-year-old in Paris with rapidly deteriorating eyesight when her father sends her on a children's tour of the museum where he works.†   (source)
  • It was clear, as the three of them stepped back into the corridor upstairs, that in the minutes that they had spent in the Room of Requirement the situation within the castle had deteriorated severely: The walls and ceiling were shaking worse than ever; dust filled the air, and through the nearest window, Harry saw bursts of green and red light so close to the foot of the castle that he knew the Death Eaters must be very near to entering the place.†   (source)
  • My hope deteriorated and I began to believe that my life would never change.†   (source)
  • The last years of his life were marked by physical deterioration and emotional torment," Mr. Lawson says.†   (source)
  • But for some reason his deteriorating hygiene pushed against his mind, causing horrific thoughts.†   (source)
  • He probably assumed that this would make the quality of Demosthenes' columns deteriorate, but if it did no one noticed.†   (source)
  • They may be deteriorating as we speak.†   (source)
  • The crush of immigrants has hastened the deterioration of many public services, namely schools, hospitals, and state jails and prisons.†   (source)
  • By the time I returned to school on Wednesday, things had deteriorated.†   (source)
  • Murtagh's mood had not improved with sleep, and Eragon found his own rapidly deteriorating.†   (source)
  • Now the thing that was deteriorating was even more important than my knees—my marriage.†   (source)
  • At the Petersen house, a doctor recorded statistics in the notes he kept, tracking the sad and inevitable deterioration of Lincoln's condition that night.†   (source)
  • So many characters contracted tuberculosis in part because so many writers either suffered from it themselves or watched friends, colleagues, and loved ones deteriorate in its grasp.†   (source)
  • As Denver's outside life improved, her home life deteriorated.†   (source)
  • The field had deteriorated during our fall of suspension.†   (source)
  • It was alarming how fast my cosmically perfect neurons had deteriorated.†   (source)
  • One was something called Project Student, with Carmela as our sponsor, which targeted the physical deterioration of the school: Walls were cracked, stairwells in disrepair, and the freeway behind the school drowned out lessons from second-floor classrooms.†   (source)
  • Excess, deterioration, self-destructiveness, grotesque behavior, a physical bloating and a series of insults to the brain, self-delivered.†   (source)
  • He returned again, having left the German army, at fairly regular intervals during the following two years, and one could not help noticing with some alarm the deterioration he underwent from one visit to the next.†   (source)
  • Meanwhile, conditions in the city began to deteriorate in reverse proportion, you might say, to the increasing courage and determination of its people.†   (source)
  • Besides the evil consequences inevitably resulting to the patients from the commingling of innocent with criminal lunatics, there is reason to apprehend a deteriorating influence on the tempers and habits of the Keepers and Officers of the Asylum, unfitting them for the humane and proper treatment of the former.†   (source)
  • Our living friendship rapidly deteriorates into a dead thing with rules and requirements.†   (source)
  • He's right; the paper from the ports always deteriorates quickly.†   (source)
  • "Once the Dauntless reach a certain level of physical deterioration," he says, "they are asked to leave.†   (source)
  • Clary sensed the mood in the room was deteriorating.†   (source)
  • It was a farewell of twenty heartrending pages in which the progress of the disease could be observed in the deteriorating script, and it was not necessary to know the writer to realize that he had signed his name with his last breath.†   (source)
  • The books that been evacuated onto Phoenix before the Cataclysm were kept in tall, oxygen-free cases that significantly slowed the deterioration process, which is why they had to be read in the library, and only then for a few hours at a time.†   (source)
  • In the meantime, Craig started to deteriorate rapidly.†   (source)
  • Maria was mystified by my ever-deteriorating frame of mind.†   (source)
  • The letter inside had been written on rice paper that after all these years was fast deteriorating, and he held it with the care he felt it deserved, moving it now into the flashlight beam, where he saw her delicate handwriting.†   (source)
  • But later on when their situation deteriorated, their prophets began to proclaim that there would one day come a new king of the House of David.†   (source)
  • Unlike Nadia, he felt in part guilty that they and their fellow residents were occupying a home that was not their own, and guilty also at the visible deterioration brought on by their presence, the presence of over fifty inhabitants in a single dwelling.†   (source)
  • It was sad how the richer he got, the more his health deteriorated.†   (source)
  • There was no telling precisely how much public health had deteriorated by the time military rule ended, but Farmer could make some guesses, based on the wreckage he returned to in Cange.†   (source)
  • Though they'd done well, the month in the grove meant everything else on the ranch had deteriorated further, and the weather wasn't helping matters.†   (source)
  • They were deteriorating; the feathers were broken and thin.†   (source)
  • Although I did not find the usual signs of organic brain damage-memory loss, concrete concept formation, intellectual deterioration-this cannot be completely ruled out.†   (source)
  • Moody's deteriorating relationship with his Iranian relatives gave me much thought.†   (source)
  • We were determined not to let conditions deteriorate entirely under Badenhorst.†   (source)
  • The cliff is pocked with knobs of jutting rock, some of which deteriorate as soon as I touch them.†   (source)
  • He deteriorated rapidly after the surgery, and his kidneys began to fail.†   (source)
  • There were already gangs, addicts, and a rougher element living in those apartments when the agencies began sending refugees to the landlords; without the refugees and the upkeep on which the agencies insisted, most in the resettlement community felt, Clarkston might have deteriorated into a slum.†   (source)
  • At the same time, people began to move out of the old row houses in East and West Baltimore, as those began to deteriorate as well.†   (source)
  • He had been just as excited as the two of us when we dragged him over to listen to the broadcast, but slowly, over the course of a few hours, his mood had deteriorated.†   (source)
  • I don't know if your mom told you, but I came on the Fourth because my grandmother had a stroke, and she's been deteriorating ever since.†   (source)
  • "That mirrors the timeline established by the body deterioration," said Puller.†   (source)
  • And at every two-week interval, he was shocked by how quickly Dempsey was deteriorating.†   (source)
  • The climate in Arizona was rapidly deteriorating.†   (source)
  • It ended up deteriorating into an all-out snowball war—which I won, by the way.†   (source)
  • Their alertness, their finely tuned instinct for self-preservation, had inevitably deteriorated into a trancelike state.†   (source)
  • It went on for about five minutes as Abby's condition deteriorated.†   (source)
  • Is it possible that her hearing could deteriorate so rapidly in just one month?†   (source)
  • His cool and meticulous appearance had deteriorated into an edgy, unshaven mess.†   (source)
  • They had grown up in a ruined home, witness to the moral and economic deterioration of their father and then the slow illness of their mother.†   (source)
  • Yossarian, we live in an age of distrust and deteriorating spiritual values.†   (source)
  • Snow Flower deteriorated.†   (source)
  • She's retiring in a few days after nearly three decades at Ballou, having seen the school slowly deteriorate from, a clean, promising place: to its current disarray.†   (source)
  • The crowd swarmed away in a panic, people screaming and scrambling to escape the gunshots, and what had been merely confusion deteriorated into total chaos.†   (source)
  • Matron offered the history that Sister Mary Joseph Praise had been in severe pain, great spasms of it, and then the pains had suddenly ceased and she'd seemed almost lucid, talking …. but now she had deteriorated again.†   (source)
  • Half a dozen concrete buildings in various degrees of deterioration.†   (source)
  • Their relationship had deteriorated and it was time to patch things up, or that's what Ramona said anyway.†   (source)
  • Scaffolds had been erected, and men of different trades worked diligently, repairing roof rafters, shoring up timbers, chipping away the deteriorated masonry, and cleaning the twisted metal and concrete debris.†   (source)
  • The original batteries had deteriorated and would run for only half an hour before they had to be recharged, which was a curse when she wanted to sit out on the terrace by the pool, and the electrical supply on Grenada left a lot to be desired.†   (source)
  • John Quincy, when he arrived in September for a holiday of several weeks, was shocked by his father's drastically deteriorating condition.†   (source)
  • As her son's condition deteriorates, Celia reluctantly cuts back on her revolutionary activities.†   (source)
  • It had been recorded over a lot of times and was more deteriorated than we would have liked.†   (source)
  • They can see quite well that if it is to survive they have not only to preserve it from deterioration, but they must protect it from the even more serious threat of the superior variant.†   (source)
  • I think her death gnawed at Mr. Morrow—his health deteriorated soon after.†   (source)
  • Your grammar's deteriorating.†   (source)
  • To people who call the hotline to complain how the language is deteriorating, Ulle Lewes gives no easy comfort: "It's not deteriorating, it's just changing, so even the rules change.†   (source)
  • Commerce is important to our national wealth; ours has totally deteriorated.†   (source)
  • Your appetite might be increasing, darling, but your taste is deteriorating.†   (source)
  • She knew our marriage and lives were rapidly deteriorating.†   (source)
  • Every symptom she exhibited led to a prognosis of rapid, neurological deterioration.†   (source)
  • Oh, and you no longer have a body that's literally deteriorating.†   (source)
  • The skin on his arms and neck sagged around deteriorating muscle.†   (source)
  • Without refrigeration, insulin deteriorated rapidly.†   (source)
  • …one's perception of the change of season—Hoss theorized that there was one of four possible reasons, or perhaps a combination of the four, which caused the Greek Jews to be dragged off the cattle cars and boxcars in such a sorry state of deterioration, indeed with so many of the prisoners already dead or near death: bad nutrition at the point of origin; the extreme length of the journey combined with the poor condition of the railroads in Yugoslavia, through which the deportees had…†   (source)
  • The wooden carvings remained as they were; but in the unventilated gun room the masks began to deteriorate and the smell became more unpleasant.†   (source)
  • This trifling detail was eloquent of the general deterioration of things, which had gone a great deal further in his absence.†   (source)
  • MORE Richard, you should go back to Cambridge; you're deteriorating.†   (source)
  • They found what they thought was her body, badly deteriorated, and ever since the Spaulding family's been no good.†   (source)
  • Hannah was so satisfied with her own unexpectedly radiant prospects that she hardly realized her mother's anxieties; for there are natures which flourish, in adversity, and deteriorate when exposed to sudden prosperity.   (source)
    deteriorate = become worse
  • Her appearance reflected the mental deterioration.
    deterioration = worsening
  • The weather deteriorated as the afternoon wore on.†   (source)
  • The sky was white but deteriorating fast.†   (source)
  • We watch the official presentation deteriorate as it's peppered with choice shots from the propos.†   (source)
  • The patient, already comatose, was deteriorating rapidly.†   (source)
  • As the years went on, Halliday's already-stunted social skills seemed to deteriorate even further.†   (source)
  • For a while, he did much better in Monroeville, but then his condition began to deteriorate again.†   (source)
  • Meanwhile our working conditions as we demolished the walls had deteriorated.†   (source)
  • Dr Meredith thought about this, then said again: "If he deteriorates, call me immediately."†   (source)
  • Prakash said, "So your mind hasn't deteriorated after all.†   (source)
  • Denise was seizing so much and deteriorating so badly, it was becoming a race against time.†   (source)
  • He didn't complain—he had no right—but he could slowly feel himself deteriorating in the cold.†   (source)
  • Even in his deteriorated state, his snake eyes shine bright and cold.†   (source)
  • If he deteriorates, call me again immediately.†   (source)
  • I saw a serious deterioration in Beth's condition in just the three-month interval.†   (source)
  • "We couldn't help but notice his deterioration in the last two interviews.†   (source)
  • War games had deteriorated into "beat up the Fifth."†   (source)
  • His voice deteriorated into a guttural scream.†   (source)
  • "Your handwriting is deteriorating," she says.†   (source)
  • Since then his condition has rapidly deteriorated.†   (source)
  • Your condition—both of your conditions—are deteriorating rapidly.†   (source)
  • Suddenly the Roman ranks deteriorated into chaos.†   (source)
  • He was adamant about pre-empting any deterioration in his power base.†   (source)
  • How much had our condition deteriorated already?†   (source)
  • While there, Jared's condition had deteriorated markedly and rapidly.†   (source)
  • In the following months, the situation deteriorated greatly, like a country at war.†   (source)
  • As the months went by, I saw Harold slowly deteriorate.†   (source)
  • With each passing minute Johan's memory was deteriorating.†   (source)
  • The men are unhappy and morale is beginning to deteriorate.†   (source)
  • In fact, her condition has rapidly deteriorated.†   (source)
  • When an animal began showing signs of anorexia, its condition deteriorated rapidly.†   (source)
  • But caution can deteriorate into obstinacy, perverseness, or disingenuity.†   (source)
  • And I worried over each letter from my mother, as she described Dad's deteriorating condition.†   (source)
  • Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault.†   (source)
  • His character deteriorated to the point where no one could stand him.†   (source)
  • The deterioration was so obvious that Clara decided to shut the house and dismiss everyone.†   (source)
  • In this humid climate both corn and sugar cane would deteriorate rapidly.†   (source)
  • The magical borders are deteriorating.†   (source)
  • After the usual histrionics about the deteriorated state of my beauty, they get right down to business.†   (source)
  • How has he deteriorated so rapidly?†   (source)
  • If Jimmy's youth shielded him from the signs of their deteriorating marriage for a bit, the problem soon reached an obvious nadir.†   (source)
  • Chris's relations with his parents, which had been unusually courteous since his graduation from high school, deteriorated significantly that summer, and Walt and Billie had no idea why.†   (source)
  • Ration card restrictions, abysmal puddings, the deteriorating quality of fingernail varnish—these are crimes they feel in their souls.†   (source)
  • For a few days, I'll be able to function with unpleasant symptoms of dehydration, but after that I'll deteriorate into helplessness and be dead in a week, tops.†   (source)
  • Eventually your weak, limited-use bodies will deteriorate and fail, giving you wrinkles, sagging parts, and old-person breath.†   (source)
  • The doctor told him I had started to deteriorate; my consciousness was fading, and I had again been vomiting blood.†   (source)
  • But the nearby blackness unsettled him, and reminded him of something, of a feeling, of a feeling he associated with children's books, with books he had read as a child, or books that had been read to him rather, by his mother, a woman with a gentle lisp and a gentle embrace, who had not died too young but who had deteriorated too young, her illness taking with it her speech, and her personality, and in the process taking his father too, making him into a distant sort of man.†   (source)
  • Unless we somehow acquired some more gas or descended to a lower camp, I knew that my teammates and I would continue to deteriorate rapidly.†   (source)
  • And despite the engineers' efforts to keep it in top condition, after three hundred years of facing the extreme temperatures and UV rays of space, it had started to deteriorate.†   (source)
  • The Flare causes a progressive, degenerative illness of the brain, resulting in uncontrolled movements, emotional disturbances and mental deterioration.†   (source)
  • No one had noticed how severely the train service had been deteriorating; it turned out that it wasn't possible to take a train from Gravesend to Sawyer Depot—and on Christmas Eve, the stationmaster told Dan, it was impossible to take a train anywhere!†   (source)
  • Anyone who has ever had to watch a loved one deteriorate after a massive stroke will no doubt look askance at the very idea of such frustration and misery being in some way intriguing, fascinating, or picturesque, and quite rightly.†   (source)
  • He was pained by the deterioration of his mother, whose joy in living had, at one time, sparked the desire to live in even the most skeptical.†   (source)
  • After this series of events—the fire, the imprisonment, the rape, the traumatic birth, and then the seizure of her son—Trina's mental health deteriorated further.†   (source)
  • As pressure builds inside the skull, motor and mental skills deteriorate with alarming speed-typically in a few hours or less-and often without the victim even noticing the change.†   (source)
  • I had been put into an induced coma, my vital signs were deteriorating, my face and body were swollen, and my kidneys and lungs failing.†   (source)
  • The bus's electric motor had a top speed of about forty miles an hour, but due to the deteriorating interstate highway system and the countless stops the bus had to make at charging stations along the way, it took several days for me to reach my destination.†   (source)
  • Similarly, Mamaw's occasional references to Mom "getting loaded" seemed like random comments of a woman known for her willingness to say anything, not a diagnosis of a deteriorating reality.†   (source)
  • In this instance, our interest is not in the deterioration of the old priest but in what his condition is telling us about him, about the boy, about the story at large, and about Joyce's collection, Dubliners, in which it is the first piece.†   (source)
  • The hospital staff had made none of the changes Dr. Fiona had recommended, and my condition had deteriorated as the night went on.†   (source)
  • Later-after six bodies had been located, after a search for two others had been abandoned, after surgeons had amputated the gangrenous right hand of my teammate Beck Weathers-people would ask why, if the weather had begun to deteriorate, had climbers on the upper mountain not heeded the signs?†   (source)
  • After Ngawang collapsed trying to walk down the valley Tuesday 'Orning and was brought back up to Base Camp, he was not put back On oxygen, even though his condition continued to deteriorate, in part because he stubbornly kept insisting that he wasn't sick.†   (source)
  • This at least told them that the cause of her epilepsy wasn't owing to electrical misfiring in her brain but a progressive deterioration.†   (source)
  • So I go ahead and tell her about Peeta, his deterioration on-screen, and how I think they must be killing him at this very moment.†   (source)
  • "If we hadn't agreed to this surgery, maybe she would have deteriorated, and maybe she would have died, but we still would have another year or two with her.†   (source)
  • "Every minute you remain at this altitude and above," he caution( your minds and bodies are deteriorating."†   (source)
  • Yanking the laces tight made Imme wince in pain; for the past two weeks the condition of my cracked, bleeding fingertips had been steadily deteriorating in the cold air.†   (source)
  • Three members of the team threw in the towel and went down at around 2:00 Pm but Smanla, PaIjor, and Morup pushed onward despite the deteriorating weather.†   (source)
  • Frank's apparent deterioration came as a particular blow: I'd assumed from the beginning that if any members of our team reached the top, Frank-who'd been high on the mountain three times previously and seemed so savvy and strong-would be among them.†   (source)
  • Over the preceding six weeks there had been several serious accidents: Tenzing's fall into the crevasse before we even arrived at Base Camp; Ngawang Topche's case of HAPE and subsequent deterioration; a young, apparently fit English climber on Mal Duff's team named Ginger Fullen who'd had a serious heart attack near the top of the Icefall; a Dane on Duff's team named Kim Sejberg who was struck by a falling serac in the Icefall and broke several ribs.†   (source)
  • I feel a great responsibility towards her still, and would value the chance to gauge how much deterioration has occurred over the past decade.†   (source)
  • He reached Torrelson's street in a few minutes; though he could have walked, he didn't know how fast the weather would deteriorate, and he didn't want to be caught in the rain.†   (source)
  • My mother was hosting another of her graduate student get-togethers, which always began as formal dinners ("Culture is so lacking in this culture!" she said) before inevitably deteriorating into loud, drunken debates about literature and theory.†   (source)
  • His roommate was asleep, his cheeks flushed with fever, but his condition did not appear to be deteriorating.†   (source)
  • They started arguing with each other about which of them had taken the stupider risks, but they were so tired the debate deteriorated into a halfhearted poking contest, like a couple of second graders.†   (source)
  • With their heart rate soaring and their motor coordination deteriorating, they dial 411 and not 911 because that's the only number they remember, or they forget to press "send" on their cell phone, or they simply cannot pick out the individual numbers at all.†   (source)
  • They watched the show and enjoyed it, but the weather had deteriorated by the time they'd left the theater.†   (source)
  • She said deteriated for deteriorated.†   (source)
  • The incident deteriorated when a large number of her schoolmates gathered in a circle to watch Gustavsson knock her to the ground over and over again.†   (source)
  • If Rachelle and Johan showed any further signs of deterioration, he would give them more, but there was no guarantee they would find any more.†   (source)
  • My blood count was deteriorating.†   (source)
  • It had been up for perhaps thirty years before Ghosh had taken that aging piece of paper and framed it for me, to protect it from further deterioration.†   (source)
  • "But while we're discussing bureaucracy, there is a risk that her condition may continue to deteriorate.†   (source)
  • By this point in the campaign—a point far beyond anything most troops in history had endured—the Marines' combat efficiency was showing signs of deterioration, and the boys themselves had begun to resemble ghostly remnants of a fighting force.†   (source)
  • Relations deteriorated after this, and in May, I persuaded the ANC of the need for me to make a visit to the king and Buthelezi.†   (source)
  • Some can audit someone's taxes in just a blink, Instead their minds are deteriorating with their kind, leaving educators in an ever tightening bind.†   (source)
  • Having seen my parents deteriorate in front of my eyes, I couldn't allow it to happen to someone else.†   (source)
  • He knew the work would keep him up most of the night, but it had to be done immediately, before the blood serum deteriorated.†   (source)
  • The food deteriorated.†   (source)
  • He wrote a carefully worded and noncommittal comment on her chart: Radiological examination gives a basis for definitive conclusions, but the condition of the patient has deteriorated steadily during the day.†   (source)
  • Or was the whole fantastic episode merely the figment of a diseased imagination, his own, of a deteriorating mind, a rotting brain?†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)