degenerate.
Having deteriorated, degraded or fallen from normal, coherent, balanced and desirable to undesirable and typically abnormal.
Meaning & usage
Having deteriorated, degraded or fallen from normal, coherent, balanced and desirable to undesirable and typically abnormal.
Having lost good or desirable qualities; hence also having bad character or habits, base, immoral, corrupt.
Having lost functionality in general.
Having multiple domain elements correspond to one element of the range.
The genetic code is degenerate because a single amino acid can be coded by one of several codons.
Qualitatively different, usually simpler, than typical objects of its class.
A degenerate circle, having radius zero, consists of a single point.
Having multiple different (linearly independent) eigenvectors.
Having the same quantum energy level.
Where this word comes from
Learned borrowing from Latin dēgenerātus. See -ate (adjective-forming suffix) for more.
One who is degenerate, who has fallen from previous stature; an immoral or corrupt person.
In the cult of degenerates, acts of decency, kindness and modesty could be seen as acts of apostasy.
Where this word comes from
From a substantivation of the above adjective, see -ate (noun-forming suffix) for more. Compare French dégénéré.
To lose good or desirable qualities.
His condition continued to degenerate even after admission to hospital.
To cause to lose good or desirable qualities.
Where this word comes from
From Latin degenerō + -ate (verb-forming suffix). Compare Italian degenerare, French dégénérer (and its older (and now obsolete) English cognate from Middle French, degener). By surface analysis, de- + generate.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.