it rots
Examples
Once you decide to gut a fish, there's no use waiting till it rots.
It rots a writer's brain, it cretinises you. You say the same thing again and again, and when you do that happily you're well on the way to being a cretin. Or a politician.
Inequality is corrosive. It rots societies from within.
Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.
When water stays at one place, it rots.