the.com/rot
nature's recycling crew, turning yesterday's corpse into tomorrow's soil with zero ceremony
means To decay or decompose through the action of microbes and time, breaking organic matter down into simpler stuff — or, figuratively, to deteriorate slowly.
from From Old English 'rotian,' to decay, with cousins all across the Germanic family — Old Norse 'rotna,' Dutch 'rotten.' The root reaches back to a Proto-Germanic notion of softening and breaking down, the same crumbling sense that gives us 'ret' (deliberately soaking flax to rot away its fibers). A word that's been describing decay for as long as English has been a language.
- speed record
- a body can skeletonize in weeks under heat
- fungal army
- fungi cause most wood decay, not bacteria
- cheese loophole
- controlled rot is why blue cheese exists
- oxygen optional
- anaerobic rot produces methane and rotten-egg stench
- slang twist
- "brain rot" was 2024's Oxford word of the year
great smog of london — killed 12,000 people in 1952 from air pollution and decay
tooth decay epidemic — affects 2.3 billion people globally with untreated caries