How to Use dilapidate in a Sentence

dilapidate

verb
  • These days, the neighborhood is on the cusp of a comeback, equal parts dilapidated and edgy.
    Sarah Dilorenzo, The Seattle Times, 12 July 2017
  • The place is dilapidated, but fixing it up gives her inner strength.
    Jeff Ayers, Orange County Register, 25 Apr. 2017
  • The family tore down a fourth house that was dilapidated.
    Devin Kelly, Alaska Dispatch News, 24 Oct. 2017
  • Though the house was dilapidated, Goodman coaxed her kids into helping her spruce it up.
    Brian Goldstone, The New Republic, 21 Aug. 2019
  • Much of their housing supply may be dilapidated, but that might not be a big problem for Amazon.
    Joseph N. Distefano, Philly.com, 15 Sep. 2017
  • There’s a sparkly new grocery store and dozens of the greystones that were near the complex and were once dilapidated have been renovated and modernized.
    Lolly Bowean, chicagotribune.com, 6 Sep. 2019
  • It was riddled with vacancies and by all accounts was dilapidated.
    Meg Kelly, Washington Post, 28 Feb. 2018
  • One of Poway’s most historic structures — one that has become rat-infested and dilapidated since being shuttered and fenced off 15 years ago — will likely be torn down to make way for a low-income housing complex for veterans.
    J. Harry Jones, sandiegouniontribune.com, 6 Jan. 2018
  • The brick houses are dilapidated, abandoned, overgrown.
    Abigail Hauslohner, Washington Post, 24 Sep. 2017
  • On the one hand, the structure is dilapidated and inaccessible to people with disabilities — a significant problem when a good portion of your regulars are senior citizens.
    Ben Sales, sun-sentinel.com, 19 Nov. 2019
  • Rossello highlighted how the island’s electrical grid, which was severely dilapidated even prior to the storms, was obsolete and working off of a generation system that was 28 years older than the average electric power utility in the United States.
    Reuters, Fortune, 23 Jan. 2018
  • Prepa’s generation plants and distribution lines were dilapidated after years of inadequate maintenance when Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico last year, knocking out power for millions of customers.
    Andrew Scurria, WSJ, 11 July 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dilapidate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: