Degraded

How to spell degraded

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce degraded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does degraded mean?

1. adjectiveReduced in quality, value, dignity, or condition.
2. verbPast tense of degrade: lowered the quality, status, or dignity of something.

Degraded in a sentence

• adjective

  Years of intensive farming left the soil badly degraded.

• verb

  The pollution slowly degraded the river over several decades.

• adjective

  The old recording sounded thin and degraded after so many copies.

• verb

  Repeated downloads degraded the image until the text was unreadable.

Where does degraded come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb degradare, which meant 'to reduce in rank', formed from de- meaning 'down' and gradus meaning 'a step' or 'a degree of rank'. The literal image is of someone being stepped down the ladder, demoted from a position of standing. It passed into English through Old French degrader in the late 1300s, originally used for stripping a knight or cleric of his office. Over time the meaning broadened from social rank to any lowering of quality, dignity, or condition, so today we speak of degraded soil, a degraded signal, or a degraded sense of self-respect. The same gradus root sits inside familiar words like grade, gradual, and graduate, which is a useful reminder that the hidden vowel in the middle is spelled 'a', not 'e'.

How the word is built

• de- (down)
• grad (from Latin gradus: step, rank)
• -ed (past participle / adjective suffix)