putrefactive

• Rhymes: -æktɪv

putrefactive (comparative more putrefactive, superlative most putrefactive)

1. Of, pertaining to, or causing putrefaction.
   • 1895–1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “Dead London”, in The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, published 1898, →OCLC, book II (The Earth under the Martians), page 282:

     And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid Handling Machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians—dead!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; […]