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moribund (adjective and noun)

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

A. adjective - At the point of death; in a dying state.
1886 E. L. Bynner “A tangle of brambles and moribund herbs.”

figurative - On the point of coming to an end.
1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. “The wail of a moribund world.”

B. noun - A person in a dying state.
1835 C. A. Bowles in Corr. w. Southey (1881) “Another person was mortally wounded and his death hourly expected. Every day the moribund’s door was besieged by crowds of anxious inquirers.”

Oh, how I love words. Not to mention the OED (”The definitive record of the English language” it says on their website. Oooooooooow, how exciting!!! Now you see why I got beat up so much in school.) Don’t miss their Word of the Day available by RSS and e-mail.

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