leprous ruin
- noun
- /ˈlɛprəs ˈruːɪn/
- Literature
:
ruina leprosa
- Vines crawled over the leprous ruin, disguising its crumbling stones in a shroud of green.
Examples
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The ancient castle stood as a leprous ruin on the hill.
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In the fog, the leprous ruins of the church appeared haunting.
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In the mist, the leprous ruin appeared ghostly and forsaken, adding to the eerie atmosphere.
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The explorer was fascinated by the leprous ruin at the edge of the ancient city.
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In the mist, the leprous ruin appeared ghostly and forsaken, adding to the eerie atmosphere.
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The explorer was fascinated by the leprous ruin at the edge of the ancient city.
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Vines crawled over the leprous ruin, disguising its crumbling stones in a shroud of green.
How Decayed
- Literature
147
3.1
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase describes a ruin possessing qualities of leprosy; combining 'leprous' (having leprosy-like characteristics) with 'ruin' yields a straightforward descriptive meaning. Although somewhat literary and metaphoric, the adjective + noun composition is fully compositional and thus understandable to a learner who knows both constituent words.
Etymology
The phrase leprous ruin comes from writers who compared old, crumbling buildings to the skin disease leprosy. They pictured walls full of rough, rotten patches like sick skin, so leprous meaning 'sick' plus ruin creates the image of a place falling apart, which is why it means 'a very decayed building'.