(v. t.) To break into small pieces; to cause to fall in pieces.
(v. i.) To fall into small pieces; to break or part into small fragments; hence, to fall to decay or ruin; to become disintegrated; to perish.
Example Sentences:
(1) The breathtaking response of the geosphere as the great ice sheets crumbled might be considered as providing little more than an intriguing insight into the prehistoric workings of our world, were it not for the fact that our planet is once again in the throes an extraordinary climatic transformation – this time brought about by human activities.
(2) Many of Long’s pieces are fragile and fleeting: a stripe of un-mown grass in an otherwise close cropped lawn at the Henry Moore foundation , a misty circle in Scotland that lasted only until the day warmed up, a stripe of green grass left by plucking daisies, or paintings in wet mud that dry out and crumble.
(3) Now the fabric of the school is visibly crumbling: roofs leak and skylights are broken; the estimated cost of repairs is £1m.
(4) And yet I sense a crumbling of the monumental Boris facade, the great artificial construct designed to make him prime minister, for reasons I have never understood.
(5) In between, the small downtown area is a shell of empty, crumbling shop fronts and derelict, boarded-up houses interspersed with the odd bar, ramshackle residential street and tracts of wasteland.
(6) They watch her life crumble as she's subjected to further turmoil through pregnancy or marital crisis.
(7) Yet we invest less in sport than other developed countries - £36 per head compared to France's £109 - and our facilities are ageing and crumbling.
(8) Diane James offers crumbling Ukip a safe pair of hands Read more James said she had not yet formalised her nomination as leader, meaning that she had never formally taken over from her predecessor, Nigel Farage, following her landslide election on 16 September.
(9) 2 Crumble the blue cheese into the porridge and then cook on a medium heat, stirring continuously with a wooden spoon until it thickens to your liking.
(10) Serves 4 100g butter, at room temperature 150g flour 50g ground almonds 30g suet 1 egg yolk 50g cooked chestnuts, chopped 5 tbsp chopped fresh thyme Salt and black pepper For the leeks 1kg leeks, trimmed 100g butter Salt and pepper 200ml double cream 1 tsp nutmeg 1 To make the crumble topping, work the butter into the flour until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs, then add the ground almonds and suet.
(11) "We inherited a crumbling infrastructure, starved of funding; Victorian schools with rundown gyms, and thousands of playing fields sold off," Sutcliffe said.
(12) 400g cooked or tinned butterbeans 1 tsp ground cumin 10ml lemon juice ¼ clove garlic, peeled and finely minced 1 small handful picked flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped 1 tbsp plain flour (gluten-free flour also works fine) 1 tsp salt 1 egg 1 spring onion, trimmed and finely sliced 50g breadcrumbs 100g feta (or other crumbly goat's or sheep's cheese) Put the butterbeans, cumin, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, flour, salt and egg in a food processor and blitz to a coarse paste: you don't want the mix fully pureed, otherwise the burgers will be too wet and will fall apart on the grill.
(13) Fortune Magazine predicted that “ the apparent M-Pesa monopoly may be set to crumble ”, indicating that the new licensing regime could open up the market long dominated by Safaricom.
(14) Supporters say Luzhkov transformed Moscow from a crumbling communist shell into a vibrant metropolis.
(15) Ruth Joseph and Sarah Nathan's crumbly little almond and lemon tarts are the perfect example of its charms, to my mind – not too sweet, not too sour, just intensely, deliciously zesty.
(16) When President Obama stands up and says - as he did when he addressed the nation in February 2011 about Libya - that "the United States will continue to stand up for freedom, stand up for justice, and stand up for the dignity of all people", it should trigger nothing but a scornful fit of laughter, not credulous support (by the way, not that anyone much cares any more, but here's what is happening after the Grand Success of the Libya Intervention: "Tribal and historical loyalties still run deep in Libya, which is struggling to maintain central government control in a country where armed militia wield real power and meaningful systems of law and justice are lacking after the crumbling of Gaddafi's eccentric personal rule").
(17) At the beginning, David Cameron spoke respectfully of "President Mubarak" and the "Egyptian government"; by this weekend, the prime minister is using the much more pejorative "regime" to describe the crumbling autocracy.
(18) He begins describing the crumbling wall of mud that enveloped him, the image of his young daughter propelling him to fight to the surface and take his first breath of air.
(19) My partner and I withstood the onslaught, but eventually the relationship crumbled under the pressure.
(20) Pour the chopped tomatoes over the peaches and onions, add chopped coriander, cumin and a finely crumbled stock cube and stir in.
Shrivel
Definition:
(v. i.) To draw, or be drawn, into wrinkles; to shrink, and form corrugations; as, a leaf shriveles in the hot sun; the skin shrivels with age; -- often with up.
(v. t.) To cause to shrivel or contract; to cause to shrink onto corruptions.
Example Sentences:
(1) Labour’s vertiginous decline in Scotland has shrivelled what used to be the primary unionist party north of the border.
(2) The time when all the cells became shriveled divided by the cell count expressed in terms of 100,000 cells was used to compare cellular susceptibilities to free radical injury and the relative effectiveness of the antioxidants.
(3) Particles prepared from a low molecular weight (MW 43,000) homopolymer had a shrivelled appearance, but were not porous.
(4) These last elements consisted of prosecretory granules attached to flattened, empty-looking saccules showing buds at their surface; detached, more-or-less fenestrated, flattened saccules; and shrivelled residual trans-tubular networks.
(5) Notwithstanding the fiery rhetoric of the odd union leader , the movement's mainstream is painfully aware of its shrivelled size, and it lacks the cocksure confidence of those distant days when it thought it could count on full employment.
(6) In the recent past a miss so glaring might have left him cowed, his display shrivelling thereafter.
(7) Osborne's faith healing has shrivelled growth, and next year looks worse.
(8) The shrivelling of liberal and green Toryism creates space for the Lib Dems to be clearly differentiated from their frenemies in the coalition.
(9) Nothing suggested by his “big society” actually happened: on the contrary, charities took the full force of cuts to contracts and grants, and public society shrivelled measurably on his watch.
(10) The curator of the collection, Rajeev Sethi, told The New York Times: "The concept of art in public space is a very serious issue because art cannot shrivel up and shrink into investment portfolios or disappear into godowns [warehouses] or galleries.
(11) Some analysts say that his wealth has shrivelled from $28bn in early 2008 to $3.5bn.
(12) These results suggest that, at least acutely in a canine model, IMA graft flow is maintained above in situ levels even when grafted to a completely patent coronary artery and that acute competitive flow probably does not cause mammary artery shriveling.
(13) But it was never just external forces that caused the IPO market to shrivel: investors were also burnt by a series of offers that left them nursing losses.
(14) Constr-uction, once a booming industry, has shrivelled.
(15) In recent weeks the pro-Russian rebels have suffered a series of heavy defeats, losing large chunks of territory, with their empire shrivelled to the two major eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
(16) The players' revolt which split tennis asunder, shrivelled 1973's Wimbledon championships to a half-baked botch and kick-started a dramatic overturn in the century-long balance of power between the administrators and administered of any major worldwide sport, was triggered because a temperamental and reasonably good Yugoslavian player, Nikki Pilic, decided to play a well-paid doubles tournament in Montreal instead of (for a pittance) a Davis Cup tie for his country against New Zealand.
(17) In the buccopharynx, the major changes following treatment with cadmium were shrinkage of the stratified epithelial cells with shriveling of the microridges and loss of lateral contacts between neighboring epithelial cells.
(18) The question that hangs over the conference season as a whole is the purpose of these shrivelling, staged-managed affairs.
(19) He went fast, lest other patients' eyes lingered on the shrivelled figure.
(20) There were brambles along the hedgerow with shrivelled stalks, and berryless hawthorns.