Degradation
[,degrə'deɪʃ(ə)n] or [,dɛɡrə'deʃən]
Definition
(n.) The act of reducing in rank, character, or reputation, or of abasing; a lowering from one's standing or rank in office or society; diminution; as, the degradation of a peer, a knight, a general, or a bishop.
(n.) The state of being reduced in rank, character, or reputation; baseness; moral, physical, or intellectual degeneracy; disgrace; abasement; debasement.
(n.) Diminution or reduction of strength, efficacy, or value; degeneration; deterioration.
(n.) A gradual wearing down or wasting, as of rocks and banks, by the action of water, frost etc.
(n.) The state or condition of a species or group which exhibits degraded forms; degeneration.
(n.) Arrest of development, or degeneration of any organ, or of the body as a whole.
Typed by Beryl
Synonyms and Synonymous
n. [1]. Dishonor, disgrace, humiliation.[2]. Deterioration, abasement, debasement, degeneracy, degeneration, decline, vitiation, perversion.[3]. (Geol.) Wearing away (of rocks, &c.).
Editor: Rochelle
Synonyms and Antonyms
[See DEBASE]
Typed by Agatha
Unserious Contents or Definition
n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.
Inputed by Celia
Examples
- The livery of his degradation! Charles Dickens. The Pickwick Papers.
- The poorness of the pasture had, in his opinion, occasioned the degradation of their cattle, which degenerated sensibly from me generation to another. Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
- Wert thou to fly, what would ensue but the reversal of thy arms, the dishonour of thine ancestry, the degradation of thy rank? Walter Scott. Ivanhoe.
- I would have spared you the degradation, but we must hear them from your own lips before we part, and you know why. Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist.
- They fell into deeper shame and degradation--if there can be deeper--and ruin. Charles Dickens. Great Expectations.
- Yet a feeling of awe, a breathless sentiment of wonder, a painful sense of the degradation of humanity, was introduced into every heart. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- Its tendency would be to raise and refine her mindand it must be saving her from the danger of degradation. Jane Austen. Emma.
- Hence the degradation which the Colonel had almost suffered, of being obliged to enter the presence of his Sovereign in a hack cab. William Makepeace Thackeray. Vanity Fair.
- It would be a degradation. Jane Austen. Emma.
- I must not at least sink into the degradation of being pensioned for work that I never achieved. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- This degradation, therefore, in the value of the money rents of colleges, has arisen altogether from the degradation in the price of silver. Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
- On a rainy day, even in a gently undulating country, we see the effects of subaerial degradation in the muddy rills which flow down every slope. Charles Darwin. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
- It was only when they had taught me at the reformatory to feel my own degradation, and to try for better things, that the days grew long and weary. Wilkie Collins. The Moonstone.
- But, the measure of his degradation was not yet full. Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist.
- No gentleman, nor even any burgher, who has stock, will submit to this degradation. Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
Edited by Josie