desuetude

Certainly we must now be set on a path to mental decay and desuetude.

That photograph, when seen on the gallery wall, potently conveys the quandary of a man, aging but still vigorous, who has been consigned to pampered desuetude in his Palm Desert retirement.

And there were abundant reasons to look back with affection at this singular Midtown institution with its wrought-iron gates from 1926, its flickering gas lanterns, the red-capped lawn jockeys donated to the place over the years by people with names — Vanderbilt, Mellon, Phipps — that filled the gossip columns of the past and then eventually, like high society itself, faded into unlamented desuetude.

By the fourth century, the gardens had apparently fallen into desuetude, and statuary in the abandoned pavilions was broken into pieces to build the foundations of a series of spas.

“This is the eschaton through lack of access, but also through human atrophy, debility, the desuetude of critical function.”