senescent

From Latin senescens, present participle of senescere (“to grow old”), from senere (“to be old”), from senex (“old”).

• Rhymes: -ɛsənt

senescent (comparative more senescent, superlative most senescent)

1. Growing old; decaying with the lapse of time.
   • 1859, Edgar Allan Poe, “Ulalume”, in The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe, volume 2:

     And now, as the night was senescent / ⁠And star-dials pointed to morn— / ⁠As the star-dials hinted of morn— / At the end of our path a liquescent / ⁠And nebulous lustre was born

   • 1905 March, Joseph Jastrow, “The Natural History of Adolescence”, in Popular Science Monthly, volume 66:

     The history of philosophic opinion itself in interpreted by Dr. Hall in terms of a similar development, in which immature adolescent systems, staid senescent and blasé philosophies have appeared and appealed to their public in direct relation to the status of the culture-periods in which they found origin and favor.

2. Characteristic of old age.
3. (cytology, of a cell) That ceases to divide.
   • 1919, Boris Sidis, The Source and Aim of Human Progress:

     When such lines and forms of organic development prevail, the individual, as the cell of the body, becomes soon senescent, drifting inevitably into age, decay, and death.

• senate
• senator
• senescence
• senile
• senior
• seniority

• senescent in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• “senescent”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• cellular senescence on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• sentences

senēscent

1. third-person plural future active indicative of senēscō