Adjacent Words

Degeneracy definitions

	Tweet

Webster's 1828 Dictionary

DEGENERACY, n.
1. A growing worse or inferior; a decline in good qualities; or a state of being less valuable; as the degeneracy of a plant.
2. In morals, decay of virtue; a growing worse; departure from the virtues of ancestors; desertion of that which is good. We speak of the degeneracy of men in modern times, or of the degeneracy of manners, of the age, of virtue, etc., sometimes without reason.
3. Poorness; meanness; as a degeneracy of spirit.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: the state of being degenerate in mental or moral qualities [syn: degeneracy, degeneration, decadence, decadency]
2: moral perversion; impairment of virtue and moral principles; "the luxury and corruption among the upper classes"; "moral degeneracy followed intellectual degeneration"; "its brothels, its opium parlors, its depravity"; "Rome had fallen into moral putrefaction" [syn: corruption, degeneracy, depravation, depravity, putrefaction]

Merriam Webster's

noun (plural -cies) Date: 1664 1. the state of being degenerate 2. the process of becoming degenerate 3. sexual perversion 4. the coding of an amino acid by more than one codon

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Degeneracy De*gen"er*a*cy, n. [From Degenerate, a.] 1. The act of becoming degenerate; a growing worse. Willful degeneracy from goodness. --Tillotson. 2. The state of having become degenerate; decline in good qualities; deterioration; meanness. Degeneracy of spirit in a state of slavery. --Addison. To recover mankind out of their universal corruption and degeneracy. --S. Clarke.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

If you refer to the behaviour of a group of people as degeneracy, you mean that you think it is shocking, immoral, or disgusting. ...the moral degeneracy of society. = depravity [disapproval]

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Deterioration, debasement, abasement, depravation, degeneration, degenerateness, declension, caducity, degradation, decline, decrease, falling off, growing worse. 2. Inferiority, meanness, poorness, low estate or state.