noun
definition
One who is degenerate, who has fallen from previous stature; an immoral person.
example
In the cult of degenerates, acts of decency, kindness and modesty could be seen as acts of apostasy.
verb
definition
To lose good or desirable qualities.
example
His condition continued to degenerate even after admission to hospital.
definition
To cause to lose good or desirable qualities.
adjective
definition
(of qualities) Having deteriorated, degraded or fallen from normal, coherent, balanced and desirable to undesirable and typically abnormal.
definition
(of a human or system) Having lost good or desirable qualities.
definition
(of an encoding or function) Having multiple domain elements correspond to one element of the range.
definition
Relating to degeneracy
definition
Having the same quantum energy level.
Examples of degenerate in a Sentence
They are small degenerate animals with a relatively firm integument.
Why do our conversations always degenerate like this?
Seasonal marches could also quickly degenerate into communal rioting.
The latter can too easily degenerate into psychic manipulation.
Cattle and horses, where introduced, are found to degenerate rather rapidly unless the supply of fresh stock is kept up. Birds are more numerous than mammals, among the most important kinds being the pigeons and doves, especially the fruit-eating pigeons.
The old explanation was that marchen are degenerate heroic myths.
There is, however, some evidence that Isoetes, which in several respects agrees more nearly with the Lepidodendreae, may actually represent their last degenerate survivors (see Pleuromeia, in § II., MEsozoic).
Hermann's daughter Agnes married the elector Valdemar, and on the death of her only brother, John VI., in 1317, the possessions of the Saltzwedel branch of the family passed to Valdemar, together with Landsberg and the Saxon Palatinate, which had been purchased from Albert the Degenerate, landgrave of Thuringia.
On his father's side, his ancestors had all been big men, and he was no degenerate scion.
In many important respects they are degenerate - reduced both in size and elaboration of structure.
We are also, by the isolation of Peripatus and the impossibility of tracing to it all other tracheate Arthropoda, or of regarding it as a degenerate offset from some one of the tracheate classes, forced to the conclusion that the tracheae of the Onychophora have been independently acquired.
Thenceforward the degenerate descendants of Clovis offered no further resistance to his claims, though it was not unti 752 that their line became extinct.
Under a series of degenerate Medici the history of Tuscany is certainly not a splendid record, and few events of importance occurred save court scandals.
The embryos are free-swimming, active forms, but in adult life the animals are fixed head downwards, and are very degenerate.
This was in the end the most popular form of text, and is found in a more or less degenerate state in all late MSS.
The type of disease, these children had also involved the brain and they would slowly degenerate over a number of years.
This affects the health of the organs or cells, which then become dysfunctional, degenerate or diseased.
The right to bear nuclear weapons could also degenerate into a nuclear free-for-all, which would terrifyingly lower the threshold of accident or use.
The IWF will not tolerate any infraction under any circumstances. As Dr. Ajan was speaking, the situation began to degenerate into utter farce.
The head of the male insect has strongly protruding eyes, branched antennae and degenerate, biting mouthparts.
All virus isolates tested were successfully amplified using degenerate primers designed by Deng et al; 1994.
But feeling without will or thought is impotent and tends to degenerate into mere self-indulgence.
Then mix in a jaw dropping performance by the film's controversial director as a degenerate white slaver.
Then the pictures degenerate into, what are to us, meaningless squiggles.
Cavefish have evolved regressive characters such as a degenerate eye, small optic tectum, and less pigment.
Dollo's view that marsupials were originally arboreal, that, on account of their foot-structure, they could not have been the ancestors of placentals, and that they themselves are degenerate placentals, Mr Bensley contrasts this with Huxley's scheme of mammalian evolution.
In cultures of the latter there occur very rare supplemental males which appear in no sense degenerate but as fit for reproduction as the males of the bisexual species.
In the sporosac, however, the medusa-individual has become so degenerate that even the documentary proof, so to speak, of its medusoid nature may have been destroyed, and only circumstantial evidence of its nature can be produced.
Hence it may be concluded that the gonophores are degenerate medusae, and not that the medusae are highly elaborated gonophores, as the organ-theory requires.
The polyp usually has the body distinctly divisible into hydranth, hydrocaulus and hydrorhiza, and is usually clothed in a perisarc. The medusae may be set free or may remain attached to the polyp-colony and degenerate into a gonophore.
But, as will be pointed out later, organs are often found to have undergone degeneration or reduction, and such reduced or degenerate structures may easily be mistaken for primitive structures, and so the investigator may be misled.
The epiphysis, or pineal body, is quite as degenerate as in mammals, although still forming a long stalk as in reptiles.
Hence, suppose genuine prayer to have come into being, it is exceedingly apt to degenerate into a mere piece of formalism; and yet, whereas its intrinsic meaning is dulled by repetition according to a well-known pyschological law, its virtue is thereby hardly lessened for the undeveloped religious consciousness, which holds the saving grace to lie mainly in the repetition itself.
Father Enfantin held fast by his ideal to the end, but he had renounced the hope of giving it a local habitation and a name in the degenerate obstinate world.
There were only Asmonean princes, degenerate and barely titular sons of Levi, to serve as judges of Israel - and they were at feud and both relied upon foreign aid.
Their personal dignity and the vast range of their colonial enterprises were in striking contrast to the retail traffic of the Ashkenazim and their degenerate bearing and speech.
Foot large, with aquiferous system; propodium reflected over head; eyes degenerate; burrowing habit.
Even in the degenerate days of the dynasty, Antiochus Grypus, who had been brought up at Athens, aspired to shine as a poet.
The frequency with which even the most highly cultivated strains produce degenerate offspring is notorious, and is probably the reason for the profound belief in telegonic action asserted by most breeders.
In the colonies of more than one European country, after the prohibition of the slave trade, attempts were made to replace it by a system of importing labourers of the inferior races under contracts for a somewhat lengthened term; and this was in several instances found to degenerate into a sort of legalized slave traffic. About 1867 we began to hear of a system of this kind which was in operation between the South Sea Islands and New Caledonia and the white settlements in Fiji.
Figs and grapes degenerate in Cuba.
His revolt against Christian faith and morals turns him into a proudly atheistic "free-thinker," and preacher of a new "master" morality, which transposes the current valuations, deposes the "Christian virtues," and incites the "over-man" ruthlessly to trample under foot the servile herd of the weak, degenerate and poor in spirit.
Applying these principles to the consideration of the Arachnida, we arrive at the conclusion that the smaller and simpler Arachnids are not the more primitive, but that the Acari or mites are, in fact, a degenerate group. This was maintained by Lankester in 1878 (19), again in 1881 (20); it was subsequently announced as a novelty by Claus in 1885 (21).
The simple anomomeristic trilobite, with its equi-formal somites and equi-formal appendages, is one term of the series which ends in the even more simple but degenerate Acari.
They are strangely modified and degenerate, but seem to be (as explained in the systematic review) the remnant of an Arachnidan group holding the same relation to the scorpions which the Laemodipoda hold to the Podophthalmate Crustacea.
Their structure is eminently that of degenerate forms. Many frequent growths of coralline Algae and hydroid polyps, upon the juices of which they feed, and in some cases a species of gall is produced in hydroids by the penetration of the larval Pantopod into the tissues of the polyp.
In the numerous degenerate forms simplification occurs by obliteration of the demarcations of somites and the fusion of body-regions, together with a gradual suppression of the lamelliferous respiratory organs and the substitution for them of tracheae, which, in their turn, in the smaller and most reduced members of the group, may also disappear.
The Mahommedans in Cutch are of the same degenerate class as those usually found in the western parts of India.
With the gradual subsidence of these areas their culture would necessarily degenerate, although echoes of sublime theogonies and philosophies are still heard in the oral traditions and folklore of many Polynesian groups.
His second son Dietrich died in 1285, and on Henry's own death in 1288 Meissen was divided between his two remaining sons, Albert (called the Degenerate) and Frederick, and his grandson Frederick Tutta, the son of Dietrich.