degeneration

What it means

1. countableuncountableusuallyThe process or state of growing worse, or the state of having become worse.

   The modern cry of "more liberty and less creed" is a degeneration from a vertebrate to a jellyfish.

   1913, B. H. Carrol, An Interpretation of the English Bible

   2 more examples

   Hence, regional soil degenerations and podsolization was probably an important factor contributing to the retrogressive change in the forest composition at the end of the mesocratic phase..

   1987, Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, page 10

   Emmanuel Macron sounded like a man in grief. Not angry, not defiant, just a little triste. Europe, he lamented, was suffering a “degeneration of democracy”.

   2025 October 12, Simon Tisdall, quoting Emmanuel Macron, “France is not alone in its crisis of political faith – belief in a democratic world is vanishing”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Synonyms: decadence, decline, degradation, debasement, degeneracy, deterioration

2. uncountableusuallyThat condition of a tissue or an organ in which its vitality has become either diminished or perverted; a substitution of a lower for a higher form of structure.

   fatty degeneration of the liver

3. uncountableusuallyGradual deterioration, from natural causes, of any class of animals or plants or any particular organ or organs; hereditary degradation of type.

In a sentence

The modern cry of "more liberty and less creed" is a degeneration from a vertebrate to a jellyfish.

1913, B. H. Carrol, An Interpretation of the English Bible

Where it comes from

1. Latindēgenerātiō
2. Frenchdégénération
3. Englishdegeneration

From French dégénération, from Latin dēgenerātiō.