51Թ

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run to seed



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Idioms and Phrases

Also, go to seed . Become devitalized or worn out; deteriorate, as in I went back to visit my old elementary school, and sadly, it has really run to seed , or The gold medalist quickly went to seed after he left competition . This term alludes to plants that, when allowed to set seed after flowering, either taste bitter, as in the case of lettuce, or do not send out new buds, as is true of annual flowers. Its figurative use dates from the first half of the 1800s.
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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

He had barely sat down before his clerk a thin, gray-haired man, high-nosed, with a look of breeding run to seed, came in, and closed the door behind him.

From

Vegetable Garden.—If cabbage, cauliflower and lettuce are wanted to plant in cold frames, the seed should be sown from about the 10th to the 20th of this month; but judgment should be exercised, for, if sown too early, cabbage and cauliflower are apt to run to seed.

From

He had the air of a postboy run to seed.

From

The studio had long since run to seed, and a perpetual odor of something to eat hung over it along with the sickening reek of the Florida water Mrs. D., like all other creoles, made more liberal use of than of the pure element it was half-named from.

From

Firstly, because the traditional garden of the early part of the eighteenth century, when the reaction set in, represented a style which had run to seed, and men were tired of it; secondly, because the taste for foreign trees and shrubs, that had existed for a long time previously, then came to a head, and it was found that the old type of garden was not fitted for the display of the augmented stock of foreign material.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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