喜樂美語
  1. 1退化；惡化（醫學上多說「退化」）

    Degeneration is the name for becoming worse — weaker, less healthy, or less good than before. Doctors use it a lot: a joint slowly wears away, nerve cells fade, the back of the eye loses sharp seeing. The change is usually slow, and often you cannot put the body back the way it was. People also use it about manners, art, or public life, to say that something they valued is sliding downhill. Though actually, that second use is not a calm description: the speaker is judging. In everyday talk the word feels formal and heavy; friends are more likely to say things are getting worse. It is a noun, so it names the slide itself, not the act of making someone worse.

From the word’s history

From French dégénération, from Latin dēgenerātiō.

來自法文 dégénération，源自拉丁文 dēgenerātiō「退化」。

Wiktionary

組成From French dégénération, from Latin dēgenerātiō. In English it sits on degenerate plus -ation (the act or process).

同家族的字

  • degeneratethe verb and adjective this noun is built from: to become worse, or already worse
  • degenerativethe adjective for illnesses that follow this slow worsening

原始詞典資料4 筆記錄

以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。

degenerationnoun/dɪˌdʒɛnəˈɹeɪʃən/

  • 1

    The process or state of growing worse, or the state of having become worse.

    • The modern cry of "more liberty and less creed" is a degeneration from a vertebrate to a jellyfish.
    • Hence, regional soil degenerations and podsolization was probably an important factor contributing to the retrogressive change in the forest composition at the end of the mesocratic phase..
  • 2

    That condition of a tissue or an organ in which its vitality has become either diminished or perverted; a substitution of a lower for a higher form of structure.

    • fatty degeneration of the liver
  • 3

    Gradual deterioration, from natural causes, of any class of animals or plants or any particular organ or organs; hereditary degradation of type.

  • 4

    A thing that has degenerated.

    • cockle, aracus, […] and other degenerations

摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。