🌱 Covered with moss 🧓 Old-fashioned

moss-grown

6.8

Covered with soft green moss, often on old stone or wood

adjective
/mɔsɡroʊn/

: cubierto de musgo

Instead, you will plummet eighty feet straight down until you hit a small ledge, catapult out into the trees, and land a little later face-first among moss-grown boulders flecked with sunshine.

Examples

In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved.

Fiction book (1991)
The moss-grown walls of the abandoned house showed how long it had been since anyone lived there.
The ancient ruins were hidden in a moss-grown forest, giving the area an eerie and timeless feel.
As we walked along the path, we admired the moss-grown stones that adorned the old pathway.

Synonyms

mossy

vsmoss-grown

6 2.9

Covered in a soft green plant that grows on stone or wood

is the hyphenated compound form rather than the single-word adjective

mossed

vsmoss-grown

5.1

Covered with a soft green plant that grows on wet surfaces

is the hyphenated compound form rather than a past-participial adjective

Antonyms

bare

217 2.2

Not covered or protected, showing the plain surface

How Mossy

mossy

6 2.9

moss-grown

6.8

patchy

11 3.7

clean

∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

moss-grown positive

Morphology

moss-grown = moss + grown (transparent) = moss + grown

Literal compound 'moss' + 'grown' meaning covered or overgrown with moss; learners who know the components can derive the sense.

Etymology

Moss-grown is made of moss and grown, and it literally means 'grown with moss'. Picture a stone or path with a soft green coat slowly covering it, and you will see why moss-grown means covered with moss.