Deteriorate

How to spell deteriorate

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce deteriorate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does deteriorate mean?

1. verbTo become progressively worse in quality, condition, or value.

Deteriorate in a sentence

• Without regular maintenance the old bridge will steadily deteriorate.

• Relations between the two departments began to deteriorate after the budget cuts.

Where does deteriorate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin verb deteriorare, meaning 'to make or grow worse', which was built on the comparative adjective deterior, simply 'worse' or 'inferior'. That comparative in turn traces back to the preposition de, carrying the sense of 'down' or 'away from', so the underlying image is of something moving downward to a poorer state. English adopted the word in the early 1600s, at first in the sense of making something worse and soon afterwards in the now common intransitive sense of declining on its own. A close relative is the rarer noun 'deterioration', and the same de- element of downward motion runs through everyday words like 'descend' and 'decline'. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the unstressed 'rior' sequence and the doubled vowel pattern of 'deter-ior-ate' are easy to slur in speech and therefore easy to misspell.

How the word is built

• deterior- (from Latin deterior: worse)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)