Dilapidated

How to spell dilapidated

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce dilapidated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dilapidated mean?

1. adjectiveIn a state of disrepair or ruin through age or neglect.

Dilapidated in a sentence

• They bought a dilapidated cottage and spent two years restoring it.

• The council finally demolished the dilapidated factory on the edge of town.

Where does dilapidated come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb dilapidare, which literally meant 'to scatter or throw stones about', built from the prefix dis- 'apart' and lapis, the Latin word for 'stone'. In Roman usage it came to mean squandering or wasting resources, as if scattering one's wealth like loose stones, and only later did the idea attach itself to buildings literally falling apart. English adopted it in the late 1500s, first in the financial sense of squandering an estate and then in the more familiar physical sense of a structure crumbling into ruin. The stony origin survives in relatives such as 'lapidary', meaning a worker in precious stones, and in 'lapis lazuli', the deep blue stone. Knowing that hidden 'lapis' is in the middle is a handy way to remember the single l and the -lapid- spelling rather than doubling letters.

How the word is built

• di- (from dis-, apart/away)
• lapid (from Latin lapis: stone)
• -ate (verb-forming)
• -ed (past participle/adjective)