Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The process or condition of worsening or degenerating.
- noun Linguistics The process by which the meaning of a word becomes negative or disparaging over a period of time, as silly, from Middle English seely, “blessed, innocent,” has come to mean “showing a lack of good sense, frivolous.”
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Deterioration; a becoming worse: specifically used in Scots law.
- noun Depreciation; a lowering or deterioration of sense in a word.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The act or process of becoming
worse ;worsening ordegeneration - noun linguistics The process by which a
word acquires a morenegative meaning over time
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Crafty once meant powerful, and cunning meant knowledgeable; each has gradually taken on negative connotations (this is called pejoration).
Catachresis and the amusing, awful and artificial cathedral 2009
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In the United Kingdom the word is still often used in this sense, but it later underwent pejoration.
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In the United Kingdom the word is still often used in this sense, but it later underwent pejoration.
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This is a customary Orthodox conclusion, and I mean no pejoration here.
orrologion 2009
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I don't really care whose "fault" the pejoration may be, I just stay away.
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Although many articles, theoretical essays, and books have been written about metaphors, little effort has been made to investigate them systematically: as all of language is itself a metaphor (unless one believes in logomancy), one is continually confronted in the compilation of an ordinary dictionary with examples of semantic and linguistic changes (as well as amelioration, pejoration, etc.) that are tantamount to shifts of meaning that, loosely, could be said to be metaphoric.
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Terms such as toilet and lavatory have, like privy, undergone pejoration over the years (that is, their meanings have acquired depreciatory connotations).
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My own observation is that Informal might be undergoing its own round of pejoration -- these things sometimes go in cycles -- and, in a reference book I recently completed, which will be published by Oxford University Press in the autumn of 1991, I have chosen to return to Colloq.
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Other, more objective treatises have been more likely to use a variety of terms with less cumulatively pejorative force -- cumulatively, because a term used once may carry only slight negative connotation but, used frequently, can create a considerable sense of pejoration in the mind of the reader.
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The Norsemen were apparently as sexist as we are: all of the following, flag, giglet, gimmer, skit, and slattern generally mean ` low, contemptible woman '; only may ` maiden' has survived with specific reference to women without pejoration.
plumpesdenken commented on the word pejoration
transform all idiomatic expressions in which 'well', 'good', and the like feature to pejorate them: 'that will do just as badly', 'for bad and all', and so forth. Casanova, Samuel Beckett
January 6, 2007