Etymology

degenerate

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Today it means: Having deteriorated, degraded or fallen from normal, coherent, balanced and desirable to undesirable and typically abnormal. Full definition →

Latin dēgenerātus
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degenerate · adjective1

  1. Latin · learned borrowing fromdēgenerātus
  2. English todaydegenerate

Learned borrowing from Latin dēgenerātus. See -ate (adjective-forming suffix) for more.

degenerate · noun2

From a substantivation of the above adjective, see -ate (noun-forming suffix) for more. Compare French dégénéré.

degenerate · verb3

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.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.