[ adj ] in deplorable condition <adj.all> a street of bedraggled tenementsa broken-down fence a ramshackle old pier a tumble-down shack
Dilapidated \Di*lap"i*da`ted\, a. Decayed; fallen into partial ruin; injured by bad usage or neglect.
A deserted and dilapidated buildings. --Cooper.
Dilapidate \Di*lap"i*date\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Dilapidated}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Dilapidating}.] [L. dilapidare to scatter like stones; di- = dis- + lapidare to throw stones, fr. lapis a stone. See {Lapidary}.] 1. To bring into a condition of decay or partial ruin, by misuse or through neglect; to destroy the fairness and good condition of; -- said of a building.
If the bishop, parson, or vicar, etc., dilapidates the buildings, or cuts down the timber of the patrimony. --Blackstone.
2. To impair by waste and abuse; to squander.
The patrimony of the bishopric of Oxon was much dilapidated. --Wood.
These streets, lined with dilapidated shacks, are teeming with tension.
The hulk of an abandoned car sits on one corner of the playing area. Squat, dilapidated homes line one side of the street.
The swim club's pool policy became the talk of the town, though, after it refused to admit the black church members who were part of a group of 66 who had spent the day renovating a dilapidated home.
Reporters gathering in a dilapidated neighborhood for a news conference about drug abuse watched in shock as a gun battle erupted in an alley across the street.
Said to be half-crazed by electroshock treatments in prison, Mr. Guillen Landrau lives in a dilapidated Havana apartment and survives by selling off his meager possessions and trading an occasional painting for food.
Junk cars rust along gravel side streets, and paint peels from dilapidated cottages.
"We hope it will give a clear signal to those who run buildings in dilapidated conditions that it will cost them a great deal of money to do so, and it's in their own best economic interest to clean up the buildings," Litt said.
After decades of decline, the river banks are today home to dilapidated warehouses and ballast heaps. But East Quayside has now received a potential shot in the arm.
A chill dawn beside the dilapidated church.
The News said some teen-age alien workers seen during a task force sweep of eight garment operations last week appeared strained by the monotonous work and dilapidated surroundings.
The developers also plan to renovate the dilapidated Times Square subway station and nine theaters.
Barry Fryer has gone to the extent of buying a small dilapidated chateau standing in 55 acres of parkland half an hour's drive from the city.
The three set up camp in a dilapidated Woodstock house, with both men playing father to the infant Rebecca.
Shipping sources say dozens of dilapidated, war-damaged tankers and support vessels from Iran's oil fleet may be ready for demolition as scrap.
The tour covers five cemeteries, two dilapidated houses, one battle site and some papaw bushes at the site where three McCoy brothers were slain by the Hatfields.
They walked a street lined with trash, gutted buildings, dilapidated stores and apartments, beat-up cars and broken sidewalks.
A fire raged out of control for three hours and gutted a dilapidated rooming house Tuesday, forcing tenants to swing from ropes and leap to neighboring roofs because there were no exterior fire escapes.
Khrushchev arrived by ship to a sodden reception at a dilapidated East River pier.
Central government subsidies have kept alive the region's dilapidated steel and en-gineering industries. In Spain, Basques control some of the land's biggest business and banking empires.
Dave Billett, 27, a volunteer at a dilapidated school on Budapest's Csepel island - a workers' district - said the contact with Americans enabled Hungarians to see that "the basic human (and) societal problems are the same" in the West.
That Moscow, with its dilapidated economic machine, would try to sell high technology to Japan, one of the world's high-tech leaders, sounds like a coals-to-Newcastle notion.
"The buildings we're taking down are all dilapidated," he said. "We won't take down a perfectly good structure." Nationwide, barns have been threatened by changing agricultural practices.
Guards patrol its fenced perimeter to keep vandals out of dilapidated buildings now taken over by weeds and wild animals.
But within minutes they had retreated to a nearby building and played no further part, as a section of the 200,000 Hindus stormed the barricades and clambered on top of the mosque's three dilapidated domes.
Because of dilapidated equipment and outmoded mining methods they have production costs of about Dollars 350 an ounce. Mining operations in both areas have so far concentrated on narrow, relatively high grade, veins.
Electricity and water are among the world's cheapest, but both are rationed to Lima's 7 milliion people, largely because of the dilapidated systems.
The bearded count, without financial means, has been fighting since 1981 to keep his chateau, a dilapidated but historic monument which the municipality wanted to restore.
Reasons range from the dilapidated track and the danger of land mines or attacks by rebels, renegade soldiers or bandits to bad weather, bureaucracy, inadequate equipment and the reluctance of crews to risk the trip.
The door of the dilapidated latrine was ripped off and was used to fill in for the missing roof, and the floor was long gone.
At the dilapidated Madison Avenue Bridge over the Harlem River, the tall, lean, lithe Dr. Yanev scrambles up exposed reinforcing bars on a bridge pier, scattering bits of concrete as he goes.