withered

comparative more withered · superlative most withered

1. Shrivelled, shrunken or faded, especially due to lack of water.

   Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.

   1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter XX, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC, page 334

   1 more example

   Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with […] on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs.

   1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter I (Anarchy), pages 377–378

   Synonyms: sear, sere

1. participlepastsimple past and past participle of wither