ˌdegrəˈdāshən noun
( -s )
Etymology: Middle French or Late Latin; Middle French, from Late Latin degradation-, degradatio, from degradatus (past participle of degradare to degrade) + Latin -ion-, -io -ion — more at degrade
1.
a. : a canonical punishment in the Roman Catholic Church by which a clergyman is perpetually deprived of all office, titles, benefices, and ecclesiastical rights and privileges
b. : a censure of a Church of England clergyman involving deprivation of office and usually the exercise of holy orders
c. : reduction to a lower rank, position, or level
stripped of his insignia of rank in an act of public degradation — United Press
d. : demotion or deposition from office
venality eventually brought about the official's degradation
e. obsolete : demotion by one or more steps on a college list of precedence imposed as a punishment
f. : lowering or descent in standing, worth, or serviceability
the degradation of reasonable sympathy into sentimentalism — W.R.Inge
indicative of the early twentieth century's mischievous degradation of the elevated and elevation of the degraded — H.F.Mooney
two great and not easily reversible evils follow: a conformity-minded speech community … and a degradation of the language — I.A.Richards
2.
a. : decline to an inferior state of shamed or shameful distortion, neglect, repudiation, or dissolution : abandonment to defeat or corruption
even translation to the screen is not always, as such, a degradation — E.R.Bentley
the primal emotions of victory and defeat, exaltation and degradation — Allan Nevins
b. : a despised state of coarsening destitution, inhumane suppression, or demoralized dejection
two centuries of degradation hardly left the freedmen in a position to take up the responsibilities of citizenship — Oscar Handlin
shocked by the hopeless degradation of the “poor whites” — Edith Wharton
the last household where I could have found the reckless Ireland of a hundred years ago in final degradation — W.B.Yeats
3. : moral or intellectual decadence : reduction to ignominy or defilement
three attempts to escape and subsequent punishment educated him in the bestiality and degradation that war brings — Drew Middleton
the historical principle of cultural development and cultural progress from savagery to civilization as against any theory of cultural retrogression or degradation — David Bidney
the degradation of art and religion to menial and mountebank offices — Clive Bell
4.
[French dégradation, from Italian digradazione, from Late Latin degradation-, degradatio ]
: the lessening in size or diminishing in light or color of objects in a drawing or painting to give perspective
5. : impairment in respect to some physical property:
a. : damage by weakening or loss of some property, quality, or capability
present synthetic rubber tires when used for this purpose are susceptible to a heat buildup that leads to excessive degradation — Roger Adams
b. : degeneration or arrest of development of any organ or of the body as a whole
c. : transformation into simpler substances or waste
d. : reduction to small lumps or particles
because the ore is loaded only once, degradation is minimized — Newsweek
e. : the weakening of a fabric that brings about a tendency to disintegrate
sodium hydroxide of 10 percent concentration at 85° C for 16 hours caused no apparent degradation of nylon — W.E.Shinn
f. : change of a soil to a type that is more highly leached or that has sodium replaced by hydrogen
6. : change of a chemical compound to a less complex compound
7. : a wearing down by erosion
modifications of the course of the river caused by gradual accretion on the one bank or degradation on the other bank — E.D.Dickinson
— compare aggradation