Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The act or process of decreasing or becoming gradually less.
- n. The amount lost by gradual diminution or waste.
- n. Mathematics The amount by which a variable is decreased; a negative increment.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The act or state of decreasing; the becoming gradually less; lessening; waste.
- n. The quantity lost by gradual diminution or waste; specifically, in mathematics, the small part by which a variable quantity becomes less and less.
- n. In heraldry, the condition of waning: said of the moon. It is represented by turning the horns of the crescent toward the sinister side. Also called detriment.
- n. In crystallography, a successive diminution of the layers of molecules applied to the faces of the primitive form, by which the secondary forms are hypothetically produced.
Wiktionary
- n. A small quantity removed or lost. One of a series of regular subtractions.
- v. To decrease a value by a basic quantity unit.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The state of becoming gradually less; decrease; diminution; waste; loss.
- n. The quantity lost by gradual diminution or waste; -- opposed to
increment . - n. (Crystallog.) A name given by Haüy to the successive diminution of the layers of molecules, applied to the faces of the primitive form, by which he supposed the secondary forms to be produced.
- n. (Math.) The quantity by which a variable is diminished.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the amount by which something decreases
- n. a process of becoming smaller or shorter
Etymologies
- Latin dēcrēmentum, from dēcrēscere, dēcrē-, to decrease; see decrease. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“As regards the second argument -- the argument based on what is called the decrement -- has any one ever heard of any system of taxation which is run upon those lines?”
“A LIFO decrement occurs when inventory decreases, depleting layers added in earlier, generally lower cost, years.”
“So what kind of decrement in SVR rates between twice daily and three times daily would begin to cause a problem for the twice daily regimen in your current opinion?”
“An increment is simply A+0 with carry set, and a decrement is A-0 with carry reset (borrow set).”
Babbage-Boole Digital Arithmetical and Logical Mill: Part 1 « The Half-Baked Maker
“But he failed to mention the pricing incentive, which is to make everyone pay the same relative pain/gain for each increment/decrement in government.”
My Take of Milton Friedman, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“It may be that we are losing our ability to focus and this decrement could have serious implications for us individually and collectively.”
“Concerning the magnitude of the cognitive deficits, the authors state: "The average decrement in cognitive test scores we observed for each standard deviation increase in tibia lead corresponded to the decrement in scores we observed for each 3-year increase in age among women in our study.”
Dan Agin: A Warning: Cumulative Lead Exposure and Cognitive Deficits in Older Women
“N shall start at 1000000 and decrement by a factor of 1.5 until the Courts find it proper.”
The Volokh Conspiracy » The proper understanding of “Necessary and Proper”:
“The earliest sign of impending dementia and Alzheimer disease (AD) is a decrement in the ability of the brain to use glucose efficiently.”
“This decrement in support has had a dramatically negative impact on all types of biomedical research and puts at risk the many gains that have been made in recent decades, including those seen in the prevention and treatment of heart disease.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘decrement’.
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phrontistery - d
from phrontistery.info
dysteleology, dyslogistic, dystectic, dysphoria, dysphonia, dystopia, dysphemism, dystocia, dyslogia, dysaesthesia, dyschromatopic, dysbulia and 624 more...
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Latin
exempli gratia, deus ex machina, prolix, sisyphean, minatory, empyrean, cicatrix, demulcent, effulgence, emulsion, garum, ablative and 39 more...
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scholarly writing words
decrement, replete, impel, iterative, subsume, tacit, vex, denote, impart, ascertain, coalesce, extant and 49 more...
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Not quite love
prolix, pleonastic, senescence, autochthonous, loup, pronk, onomatopoeia, magisterial, rixatrix, esurient, blowsabella, crapulence and 69 more...
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Monovocalics
Words that have only one of the vowels. On this list I include only words with at least three vowels. When I first started the list, if a word had several forms, I generally listed only the one wit...
syzygy, mirific, cumulus, homolog, monocot, bedewed, jezebel, referee, bikini, minikin, locomotor, terebenthene and 2359 more...
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Words!
quixotic, lugubrious, laconic, terse, diaphanous, truculent, solipsism, meretricious, recondite, salacious, avuncular, obdurate and 229 more...
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palavra' no má'
infinitesimal, coy, sobriquet, cognomen, succinct, secularism, ubiquitous, antithesis, tercet, adjudged, void for vagueness, surfeit and 69 more...
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Loss
Words related to loss.
deprivation, privation, destitution, perdition, deperdition, amission, void, decrement, decrease, diminution, dispossession
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Conceptions
Ideas of interesting things.
gharial, ungulate, glossolalia, druze, bultitude, maraschinos, pfifltriggi, borscht, electrifying, instrumentality, lion-eating poet ..., landsknecht and 60 more...
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Reduction
Words related to reduction.
diminution, diminishment, defalcation, abatement, decrement, decrease, atrophy
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Dythe's Words
davenport, perpendicular, pinnacle, dirge, plethora, giraffe, boolean, liquid, fiasco, october, okay, celsius and 16 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for decrement.
milosrdenstvi Trying to teach myself calculus again. Evidently the opposite of increment, but much less commonly used. Perhaps that's why it sounds really cool? Actually, I'm pretty sure I like this word only because every time I see/hear it I think specific decrement. Nov 24, 2010