blight

(blīt)

a. Any of numerous plant diseases resulting in sudden conspicuous wilting and dying of affected parts, especially young, growing tissues.

b. The condition or causative agent, such as a bacterium, fungus, or virus, that results in blight.

a. An agent or action that harms or ruins the value or success of something: "the heavy-handed, moralistic parenting that was the blight of the traditional family" (Theodore Roszack).

b. A condition or result of harmful or ruinous action: policies that lifted the city from economic blight.

v. blight·ed, blight·ing, blights

v.tr.

1. To cause (a plant, for example) to undergo blight.

2. To have a deleterious effect on; ruin. See Synonyms at blast.

v.intr.

To suffer blight.

[Origin unknown.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Adj.

blighted - affected by blight; anything that mars or prevents growth or prosperity; "a blighted rose"; "blighted urban districts"

spoilt

destroyed - spoiled or ruined or demolished; "war left many cities destroyed"; "Alzheimer's is responsible for her destroyed mind"

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

She has sent messengers to his court with costly gifts; but all have returned sick for want of sunlight, weary and sad; we have watched over them, heedless of sun or shower, but still his dark spirits do their work, and we are left to weep over our blighted blossoms.

Gently she answered, telling them her errand, beseeching them to let her pass ere the cold wind blighted her frail blossoms.

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THE happiest day-the happiest hour My seared and blighted heart hath known, The highest hope of pride and power, I feel hath flown.

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"Which do we live on--a splendid one or a blighted one?"

"'Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't it, Tess?" murmured Abraham through his tears.

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"Fading, with the Night, the memory of a dead love, and the withered leaves of a blighted hope, and the sickly repinings and moody regrets thatnumb the best energies of the soul: and rising, broadening, rolling upward like a living flood, the manly resolve, and the dauntless will, and the heavenward gaze of faith--the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen!

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There was the same thick air, difficult to breathe; the same blighted ground, the same hopeless prospect, the same misery and distress.

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I fell under that titular avalanche a torn and blighted thing.

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The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and - and in short you are for ever floored.

If, in the progress of revolving years, I could persuade myself that my blighted destiny had been a warning to you, I should feel that I had not occupied another man's place in existence altogether in vain.

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Had she not deceived me, injured me - blighted my happiness for life?

Yes, you have done me an injury you can never repair - or any other either - you have blighted the freshness and promise of youth, and made my life a wilderness!

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