deterioration

Etymology

It is borrowed from French détérioration,^[2][3][4] recorded in French from the 15th century,^[2][5] a noun of action from détériorer (“to make worse”),^[2][5][4] from Late Latin dēteriōrō (“to make worse; to grow worse”).^[5][2][3] Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com take it directly from the Late Latin noun dēteriōrātiō,^[6][7] and Etymonline allows that it may have been formed in English.^[5] The Latin verb comes from dēterior (“worse”),^[5][8][9] a comparative of an unrecorded *dēter (“lower, bad”),^[5][10][11] built on dē (“down”) with the suffix -ter seen in exterior and interior.^[8][7][6] Etymonline traces it further to Proto-Indo-European *de-tero-, from the demonstrative stem *de-.^[5] The verb deteriorate is older, from 1572 in the OED.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The action or process of making or growing worse: 1658, in E. Phillips's The New World of English Words.^[2][12] Etymonline dates it to the 1650s,^[5] and Merriam-Webster to about 1658.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept its first meaning, both the act of making something worse and the process of becoming worse.^[2][12] Johnson (1755) defined it in these two ways, as the act of making anything worse and the state of growing worse.^[13] This follows the verb, which was first transitive, to make worse (1572), and became intransitive, to grow worse, only in the 18th century.^[2][9] Today it most often names a gradual decline, as in a patient's condition.^[14][6]

Timeline

• 1572 – the verb deteriorate, to make worse.^[2]
• 1658 – deterioration, a making or growing worse.^[2][6]
• 1755 – Johnson defines it as the act of making a thing worse or the state of growing worse.^[13]
• 1758 – deteriorate used intransitively, to grow worse.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The process of becoming gradually worse; a decline in quality, value or condition: a steady deterioration in the roof timbers.^[14][6][2]
2. The act of making something worse; impairment.^[6][15][2]
3. A worsened state or condition.^[6][2]

Related words

• deteriorate
• interior
• exterior

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ a b Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
13. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers