Degradation (from Latin: degradatio, literally — reduction), regression — the process of deterioration of characteristics of an object with time; moving back; gradual decline; decline in quality; breakdown of matter due to the impact of external forces in conformity with the laws of nature and time. Degradation is often referred to as the opposite of Progress. Degradation may refer to:
- Biodegradation, the processes by which organic substances are broken down by living organisms
- Cashiering or degradation ceremony, a ritual performed when cleric is deprived of office or a knight is stripped of the honour
- Chemical decomposition, the degradation of chemical compounds
- Corruption (philosophical concept)
- Defamation
- "Degradation" a song by the Violent Femmes, from Add It Up (1981–1993)
- Degradation (telecommunications), the loss of quality of an electronic signal
- Elegant degradation, in engineering, the gradual failing of a machine
- Environmental degradation, in ecology, damage to the ecosystem and loss of biodiversity
- Graceful degradation, in a fault-tolerant system
- Degradation (geology)
Famous quotes containing the word degradation:
“Self-alienation is the source of all degradation as well as, on the contrary, the basis of all true elevation. The first step will be a look inward, an isolating contemplation of our self. Whoever remains standing here proceeds only halfway. The second step must be an active look outward, an autonomous, determined observation of the outer world.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“The three great problems of this century, the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)