English
degenerate
Degenerate comes from Latin dēgenerātus ‘degenerated, deteriorated’, and goes back to Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₁- ‘to produce’.
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*ǵenh₁-‘to produce’next step skipped: Latin dēgenerō
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEdēgenerātus‘degenerated, deteriorated’
- Englishearliest quotation c. 1591–1592degenerate
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
Lineage
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*ǵenh₁-‘to produce’next step skipped: Latin dēgenerō
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEdēgenerātus‘degenerated, deteriorated’
- Englishearliest quotation c. 1591–1592degenerate
Earliest quotation: c. 1591–1592, William Shakespeare, The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]: “Farwell faint-hearted and degenerate King, / In whose cold…”
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₁- ‘to produce’
kind, king, nature, nation, general, german, native, engine, pregnant, generation, ken, genius, oxygen, gender, indigenous, genuine, genetic, gentle, genre, gene, naive, hydrogen, kin, noel, genocide, genus, natal, nada, innate, genital, naïve, ingenious, nativity, nee, nascent, janata, germ, puny, gentile, jaunty, 115 more
Today it means
adj Having deteriorated, degraded or fallen from normal, coherent, balanced and desirable to undesirable and typically abnormal.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₁- / degenerate