What does "mothballing" mean?

The act of something being mothballed: taken out of service and stored for possible later use.

What is a synonym for "mothballing"?

Common synonyms include: ball, camphor ball, defer, pigeonhole, pigeonhole, set aside.

Mothballing

noun, verb

noun, verb ·3 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
The act of something being mothballed: taken out of service and stored for possible later use. countable, uncountable

Verb

1
present participle and gerund of mothball form-of, gerund, participle, present

Synonyms

All synonyms

ball camphor ball defer pigeonhole pigeonhole set aside

Example

More examples

"Following the docking failure of an unmanned Russian freighter to the International Space Station, its partners are considering a temporary mothballing of the station."

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.