Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Decomposition of organic matter, especially protein, by microorganisms, resulting in production of foul-smelling matter.
- noun An amount of putrefied matter or an odor produced by such matter.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The act or process of putrefying; the decomposition of animal and vegetable substances, attended by the evolution of fetid gases.
- noun Putrefied matter.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The act or the process of putrefying; the offensive decay of albuminous or other matter.
- noun The condition of being putrefied; also, that which putrefied.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun the act of causing to
rot ; theanaerobic splitting ofproteins bybacteria andfungi with the formation ofmalodorous , incompletelyoxidized products - noun rotted material
- noun the state of being rotted
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun moral perversion; impairment of virtue and moral principles
- noun a state of decay usually accompanied by an offensive odor
- noun (biology) the process of decay caused by bacterial or fungal action
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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He was looking at it as though it were an animal, days dead and far gone in putrefaction, that had been malevolently dumped on a pristine altar consecrated to solemn rituals and tended to by votaries of an elite cult.
Florence of Arabia 2004
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He was looking at it as though it were an animal, days dead and far gone in putrefaction, that had been malevolently dumped on a pristine altar consecrated to solemn rituals and tended to by votaries of an elite cult.
Florence of Arabia 2004
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Man is not pure for he is a worm, hatched in putrefaction, and therefore odious to God.
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume III (Job to Song of Solomon) 1721
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He (that is, man) as a rotten thing, the principle of whose putrefaction is in itself, consumes, even like a moth-eaten garment, which becomes continually worse and worse.
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume III (Job to Song of Solomon) 1721
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He writes: "Nature never multiplies anything, except in either one or the other of these two ways: either by decay, which we call putrefaction, or, in the case of animate creatures, by propagation.
Bygone Beliefs 1969
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Destruction supervenes when the determined gets the better of the determining by the help of the environment (though in a special sense the word putrefaction is applied to partial destruction, when
Meteorology 2002
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Reply Obj. 2: Christ's body was a subject of corruption according to the condition of its passible nature, but not as to the deserving cause of putrefaction, which is sin: but the Divine power preserved
Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) From the Complete American Edition Aquinas Thomas
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If the fermentation is of vegetables or fruit, the toxins are irritating, stimulating and enervating, but not so dangerous or destructive to organic life as putrefaction, which is a fermentation set up in nitrogenous matter -- protein-bearing foods, but particularly animal foods.
How and When to Be Your Own Doctor Isabel Moser
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We have already said that we believe that they are nothing but the ordinary vibrios of putrefaction, reduced to a state of extreme tenuity by the special conditions of nutrition involved in the fermentable medium used; in a word, we think that the fermentation in question might be called putrefaction of tartrate of lime.
The Harvard Classics Volume 38 Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) Various
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A slight quantity of air, however, is sufficient for putrefaction, which is a powerful deoxydizing process that extracts oxygen even from the roots of plants.
Farm drainage The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining Land with Stones, Wood, Plows, and Open Ditches, and Especially with Tiles Henry Flagg French
dailyword commented on the word putrefaction
Holmes used this word when he and Watson were investigating the death of Irene's dwarf client.
June 13, 2012