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Deteriorate   /dɪtˈɪriərˌeɪt/   Listen
Deteriorate

verb
(past & past part. deteriorated; pres. part. deteriorating)
1.
Become worse or disintegrate.
2.
Grow worse.  Synonyms: degenerate, devolve, drop.  "Conditions in the slums degenerated" , "The discussion devolved into a shouting match"  Antonym: recuperate.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Deteriorate" Quotes from Famous Books



... The law of Reversion to Type runs through all creation. If a man neglect himself for a few years he will change into a worse and a lower man. If it is his body that he neglects, he will deteriorate into a wild and bestial savage. . . . If it is his mind, it will degenerate into imbecility and madness. . . . If he neglect his conscience, it will run off into lawlessness and vice. Or, lastly, if it is his soul, it must inevitably ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond

... to judge. He thinks that if we followed hard reason—and by 'hard reason' he obviously means an imitation on our part of the action of natural selection—we should be led to sweep away all those institutions by which civilised mankind guards its weaker members. But this, he says, would be only to deteriorate the "noblest part of our nature." What is noblest in our nature, then, is not that which natural selection has favoured or maintained. There is, therefore, implied in his view a limitation of the ethical significance of the principle of natural selection. For, when we come to this crucial question ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley

... cheapness. There would be less labor incorporated into an acre of grain, and the agriculturist would be therefore obliged to exchange it for less labor incorporated into some other article. If, on the contrary, the fertility of the soil were suddenly to deteriorate, the share of nature in production would be less, that of labor greater, and the result would ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... small boxes to be squeezed into narrow places. When the hold is full the hatch is fastened down and caulked, as exposure to the salt air injures the teas. The finest kinds are so delicate, indeed, that they cannot be exported by sea; for, however tightly sealed, they would deteriorate during the voyage. The very superior flavor noticed by travellers in the tea used at St. Petersburg is doubtless to be attributed in an important measure to its overland transportation, and its consequent escape from dampness; the large quantities consumed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... should be addressed to a eugenist, but I shall try to give you the answer. The blood of the House of Hohenzollern is of a very high order for it is the blood of divinity in human veins. Yet since there is no eugenic control, no selection, the quality of that blood would deteriorate from inbreeding, were there no fresh infusion. Then where better could such blood come than from the men of genius? No man is given the full social privilege of the Royal Level except he who has made some great contribution to the ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings


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