depreciate

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English depreciaten,^[2][3] borrowed from Late Latin dēpretiātus (“undervalued”),^[2][4][3][5] the past participle of dēpretiō (“to lower the price of, undervalue”),^[4][6][7][8] a verb commonly spelt dēpreciāre in medieval manuscripts.^[9][3][8] The verb is formed from dē- (“down”) and pretium (“price”),^{[9][4][10][11]} the source of price;^[4][6] Klein goes through an intermediate pretiō (“to prize, value”).^[6] The American Heritage Dictionary refers the noun to the fifth Indo-European root spelt Proto-Indo-European *per-.^[10] The OED compares French déprécier, in the French Academy's dictionary of 1762.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

To undervalue or despise someone: Lest your subiectes defoule you and depreciate, in the 1543 print of Hardyng's Chronicle of 1464.^[2] Etymonline also dates "to undervalue" to the mid-15th century,^[4] and the Shorter Oxford and Merriam-Webster Unabridged put the belittling sense in that century too.^[11][8] Barnhart's first date is 1564,^[3] and the OED, whose entry has not been fully revised, starts with the sense "to lower in value" in Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646).^[9]

Semantic evolution

English recorded the figurative sense "to undervalue" first and the literal Latin sense "to lower the price of" only later, in the 1640s and 1650s.^[2][9][4] The OED, which has no record before those decades, starts from the literal sense and dates belittling from Boyle in 1666.^[9] Johnson (1755) defined the verb as "to bring a thing down to a lower price" and "to undervalue".^[12] The intransitive "to fall in value" came last: the OED's first quotation is from Franklin's Autobiography, and Hoad calls the use originally American.^[9][13] The accounting use, writing off an asset's cost over a period, is recorded in modern dictionaries beside the others,^[8][10][14] and in the sense of value the verb is the opposite of appreciate.^[8]

Timeline

• 1464 – to undervalue, despise, in Hardyng's Chronicle.^[2]
• 1646 – to lower in value.^[9] Etymonline also dates it to the 1640s.^[4]
• 1656 – to lower the market price of something, or the purchasing power of money, in Blount's Glossographia.^[9]
• 1666 – to represent as of less value, to belittle, in Boyle.^[9]
• early 18th century – intransitive, to be disparaging.^[11]
• 1767 – the noun depreciation, in Franklin's writings.^[3]
• before 1790 – intransitive, to fall in value, in Franklin.^[9][4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To lose value or price, especially over time: Most new vans depreciate sharply in their first two years.^[7][14][9]
2. To lessen the price or value of something, or the purchasing power of money: The flood of printed notes depreciated the currency.^[8][10][9]
3. To write off part of the cost of an asset over a period, in accounts or against taxable income.^[8][10][14]
4. To represent as of little worth; to belittle or disparage: She tends to depreciate her own achievements.^{[8][7][10][9]}

Word family

• depreciator
• depreciable
• depreciatingly
• depreciation
• depreciative
• depreciatory
• undepreciated

Related words

• appreciate
• price
• precious
• dispraise
• disprize
• deprecate

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d e f The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
14. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press