Deteriorating

How to spell deteriorating

13 letters · 6 syllables

How to pronounce deteriorating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does deteriorating mean?

1. verbBecoming progressively worse in quality, condition, or value.

Deteriorating in a sentence

• The old bridge had been deteriorating for years before the council finally closed it.

• His health was visibly deteriorating despite the new medication.

Where does deteriorating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin comparative adjective deterior, which simply meant 'worse' or 'inferior', the opposite direction from 'better'. From that came the late Latin verb deteriorare, 'to make worse' or 'to grow worse', and its past participle deterioratus supplied the stem English adopted. English took up the verb 'deteriorate' in the early 1600s, at first often meaning 'to make something worse' before the now familiar intransitive sense of 'to grow worse on its own' took hold. The present participle 'deteriorating' is built by adding the ordinary -ing ending. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the unstressed -rior- cluster (from that Latin deterior) is easy to garble into 'deteoriating' or 'detiorating', so it helps to picture the hidden 'rior' that the word shares with words like 'inferior' and 'superior'.

How the word is built

• de- (down, away)
• deterior (Latin: worse, inferior)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)
• -ing (present participle)