Both Uses of
atrophy
in
Absalom, Absalom!
- ... the need, to communicate by speech atrophies from disuse and...
Chpt 4 *atrophies = withers or weakens
- And amicably, not as two white women and a negress, not as three negroes or three whites, not even as three women, but merely as three creatures who still possessed the need to eat but took no pleasure in it, the need to sleep but from no joy in weariness or regeneration, and in whom sex was some forgotten atrophy like the rudimentary gills we call the tonsils or the still-opposable thumbs for old climbing.†
Chpt 5
Definition:
to wither or weaken -- especially from lack of use