Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use decay in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Decay means rot; any processes or result of organic matter being gradually decomposed, especially by microbial action. Example: “The pair loved to take pictures in the decaying hospital on forty-third street.”

Examples of decay by meaning

nounDeterioration of condition; loss of status, quality, strength, or fortune.

  • civic and moral decay—systemic decay—fall into decay—urban decay—arrested decay—memory decay

nounRadioactive decay; decomposition of an atom or its nucleus.

  • alpha decay—gamma decay—fission decay—decay chain

nounContinuous decrease of a quantity.

  • exponential decay—decay rate—orbital decay—decay time—decay constant—time decay

verbTo deteriorate, to get worse, to lose strength or health, to decline in quality.

  • The pair loved to take pictures in the decaying hospital on forty-third street.
  • The system is decaying.2026 February 18, Paul Clifton, “West of England Line problems laid bare”, in RAIL, number 1055, page 7

verbTo undergo prolonged reduction in altitude (above the orbited body).

  • Damaged on lift-off, Skylab was left in orbit until its orbit decayed.2009, Francis Lyall, Paul B. Larsen, Space Law: A Treatise, page 120

verbTo rot, to go bad.

  • The cat's body decayed rapidly.
  • The largest tree known to us is at Syon (Plate 124), which in 1904 was no less than 60 feet in height by 7 feet in girth and still a fine tree, though its trunk is decaying inside.1907, Henry John Elwes and Augustine Henry, The Trees of Great Britain & Ireland, Volume 2/Cladastris

verbTo change by undergoing fission, by emitting radiation, or by capturing or losing one or more electrons; to undergo...

  • Uranium decays to radium through a long series of steps with a cumulative half-life of 4.4 billion years.2005, Encyclopedia of Earth Science, edited by Timothy M. Kusky, →ISBN, page 349

verbTo cause to rot or deteriorate.

  • The extreme humidity decayed the wooden sculptures in the museum's collection in a matter of years.

More sentences with decay

  • The dentist pulled out the decayed tooth and put in a bridge.From the entry bridge
  • This radioactive decay produces a hassium that lasts for several seconds.From the entry hassium
  • Historians argue about when the Roman Empire began to peak and ultimately decay.From the entry peak
  • The decayed remains of the pilot's shirt showed where the plane had been shot down.From the entry decayed
  • Jamie had a molar removed as it was decaying.From the entry molar
  • I brush my teeth regularly to prevent tooth decay.From the entry prevent
  • This radioactive decay leaves behind a protium as well.From the entry protium
  • In the Wetherill diagram, no isotope is found on both axes, allowing the two decay schemes to be evaluated independently.From the entry Wetherill diagram
  • When power is sought primarily for private gain, the social fabric decays and unravels.2023 June 25, Charles Hugh Smith, The Corruption of POTUS, SCOTUS and SCROTUS. From the entry gain
  • Sagalassos is in fact the only eastern bouleuterion to show decay in the 5th c.2021, Luke Lavan, Public Space in the Late Antique City, Brill, →ISBN, page 310. From the entry odeon
  • It is shown that Uranus and Neptune were formed as a result of protosaturn decay.2018, “Small Bodies and Dwarf Planets”, in Planetary Geology, https://www.researchgate.net, pages 311-343. From the entry protosaturn
  • The excited 23P0 atoms spontaneously decay unpreferentially to each Zeeman sublevel of the metastable 23S1 state.2016, Michael J Haji-Sheikh, Subhas C Mukhopadhyay, Asaf Grosz, High Sensitivity Magnetometers, Switzerland: Springer International…. From the entry unpreferentially
  • Due to its experimental interest, evaluation of decay rates are performed for berylliumlike xenon and uranium.2015, Pedro Amaro, Filippo Fratini, Laleh Safari, Jorge Machado, Mauro Guerra, Paul Indelicato, José Paulo Santos, “Relativistic…. From the entry berylliumlike
  • They are barnacles that accumulate in a mass of decaying metal.2015 June 2, Jonathan Jones, “Love locks are the shallowest, stupidest, phoniest expression of love ever – time to put a stop to it”, in…. From the entry love lock
  • The pandemonium effect obviously has major consequences for decay heat calculations.2014, Juha Äystö, Tommi Eronen, Ari Jokinen, IGISOL, page 247. From the entry pandemonium effect
  • In the higher Higgs boson mass domain, the Higgs boson decays dominantly to a pair of b-quarks.2011, Christopher G. Tully, Elementary Particle Physics in a Nutshell, page 255. From the entry Higgs boson
  • The abundance of dead and decaying animals turns the traps into attractive habits for different organisms.2011, Janek von Byern, Ingo Grunwald, editors, Biological Adhesive Systems, Springer Science & Business Media, page 24. From the entry protocarnivorous
  • Already we've seen early hallmarks of the twentieth century: colonial decay, cultural appropriation, and competing trademarks.2010, Roger Bennett, Eli Horowitz, Everything You Know Is Pong, Harper Collins, →ISBN, page 4. From the entry gossima
  • On subsequent peribothra further tidal interactions take place, gradually causing the orbit to decay.2006 July, LM Dray, AR King, MB Davies, “Young stars in the Galactic Centre: a potential intermediate-mass star origin”, in Monthly…. From the entry peribothron
  • He abhors his decaying portrait, which pitilessly shows him the way of all flesh.2004, Elana Gomel, “Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the (Un)Death of the Author”, in Narrative, volume 12, number 1, page 84. From the entry way of all flesh
  • Like most later pedestrian malls, it was intended to revive what everybody thought was a decaying downtown.2002, Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn′t, page 179. From the entry mall
  • Fields and Alfred Bester at play in the decaying kibble-landscapes of the Phildickian oeuvre!2000, Damien Broderick, Transrealist fiction: writing in the slipstream of science, →OCLC, page 134. From the entry Phildickian
  • In particular semitauonic B decays can give important constraints on the charged Higgs sector.1998, M. Rozanska, “On a feasibility of measuring exclusive semitauonic B0 decays at B-factories”, in Acta Physica Polonica, volume 29…. From the entry semitauonic
  • The film moves Barker's decaying British urban blightscape to an even grungier Chicago and the Cabrini-Green wasteland.1993, Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling, editors, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixth Annual Collection, page lxxix. From the entry blightscape
  • Surrealism only represented the artist’s darker, more tragic aspect in its ”decay, aimlessness, discontinuity, unrelatedness, and unexplicableness.”1990, Siegfried Pflegerl, “Ad REINHARDT”, in Die vollendete Kunst (overall work in German), Vienna; Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, →ISBN, section…. From the entry unexplicableness
  • At present there is a dearth of older dying and decaying material.1985, Nicholas Smart, John Andrews, Birds and Broadleaves Handbook: A Guide to Further the Conservation of Birds in Broadleaved Woodland…. From the entry doddard
  • One of these was fox fire, the spectral glow given off by fungi on decaying timber.1983, Manuel Robbins, “Collecting Fluorescent Minerals”, in The Collector’s Book of Fluorescent Minerals, New York, N.Y.; London: Van…. From the entry foxfire
  • The town itself is one of flat-rooved houses, stretched resources and economic decay.1981 October 29, “War in Sudan desert draws little attention”, in The Daily Illini, volume 111, number 47, Champaign-Urbana, Ill.: Illini…. From the entry rooved
  • Phenol-formaldehyde bonded particleboards were dimensionally stabler than urea bonded particleboards in the decay chamber.1980, P. J. Sereda, Durability of Building Materials and Components, page 959. From the entry stabler
  • But the shift is not only tonal or textural, from sweet green growth to fetid brown decay.1980, Enid Rhodes Peschel, Medicine and literature, page 197. From the entry rottedness

Meaning of decay

  1. noun Rot; any processes or result of organic matter being gradually decomposed, especially by microbial action.
  2. noun Deterioration of condition; loss of status, quality, strength, or fortune.
  3. noun Radioactive decay; decomposition of an atom or its nucleus.

Full definition of decay

Questions about decay in a sentence

How do you use decay in a sentence?
Decay is used as a noun and verb. For example: “The pair loved to take pictures in the decaying hospital on forty-third street.”
What is a short sentence with decay?
“The system is decaying.”
What does decay mean?
Decay means rot; any processes or result of organic matter being gradually decomposed, especially by microbial action.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: decay (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use decay in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/decay. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.