blighted

adjective

blight·​ed ˈblī-təd 

1

botany : affected with blight (see blight entry 1 sense 1)

a blighted plant

This pathogen causes blighted flowers, heavy leaf spotting, and the death of young, green shoots.

—Elsie Cox

2

: in a badly damaged or deteriorated condition

a blighted landscape

a blighted city

… the physicians who work here in some of the nation's most blighted neighborhoods …

—Malcolm Gladwell

3

: made ineffectual : defeated or frustrated

blighted dreams

At every point we are confronted with shattered promises, blighted hopes, irreconcilable dilemmas, good intentions gone astray …

—Gertrude Himmelfarb

Examples of blighted in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The foul odors subsided when the facility closed in 2014, but a decade later, the infrastructure sits as a 47-acre blighted industrial property on the edge of the Santa Cruz River. —John Leos, The Arizona Republic, 1 Nov. 2024

These projects have come via infill projects which help eliminate blighted buildings and help to rejuvenate aging neighborhoods. —Jonathan Horwitz, Orange County Register, 4 Oct. 2024

In Coppola’s version, Catilina has become Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a visionary Nobel Prize-winning scientist-architect obsessed with rebuilding the urban blighted New Rome as a sustainable utopia. —Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 26 Sep. 2024

Cleaning up these blighted areas is a crucial step toward making San Jose a more vibrant and thriving city. —Letters To The Editor, The Mercury News, 23 Sep. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1665, in the meaning defined at sense 1