Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use degenerate in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun, verb

Degenerate means having deteriorated, degraded or fallen from normal, coherent, balanced and desirable to undesirable and typically abnormal. Example: “The genetic code is degenerate because a single amino acid can be coded by one of several codons.”

Examples of degenerate by meaning

adjectiveHaving lost good or desirable qualities; hence also having bad character or habits, base, immoral, corrupt.

  • If my boy is not tempted to gamble at a fashionable card party he will never learn from the degenerate, blackleg gamblers in the joint.1918, Alexander Corkey, The Vision of Joy, or When "Billy" Sunday Came to Town
  • The author explores the gap between the degenerate, elitist society of the domes and the working population.1985 February 2, Tim Broadbent, “Kindred Spirits (review)”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 28, page 10
  • What are the odds that an alcoholic and degenerate gambler with no money management skills could survive in a city that ate addicts for lunch and dreams for dinner?2013, Artie Lange, Crash and Burn

adjectiveHaving lost functionality in general.

  • It is likely that the long evolutionary trajectory of Mycoplasma went from a reductive autotroph to oxidative heterotroph to a cell-wall–defective degenerate parasite.2013 March, Harold J. Morowitz, “The Smallest Cell”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 2, archived from the original on 04 Jan...

adjectiveHaving multiple domain elements correspond to one element of the range.

  • The genetic code is degenerate because a single amino acid can be coded by one of several codons.

adjectiveQualitatively different, usually simpler, than typical objects of its class.

  • A degenerate circle, having radius zero, consists of a single point.
  • We now apply the geometrical construction explained in the appendix to the degenerate triangle ABC.1921, A. Hay, “Phase Transformation and Phase Balancing”, in Journal of the Indian Institute of Science, volume 4, page 102

nounOne who is degenerate, who has fallen from previous stature; an immoral or corrupt person.

  • In the cult of degenerates, acts of decency, kindness and modesty could be seen as acts of apostasy.
  • The undeveloped or mysterically confused thought which exists in savages is fully exemplified in the childish or crazy atavistic anthropomorphism and symbolism so prevalent among degenerates.1911 May, “Insanity and the Art of the Borderland”, in The International Studio, volume 32, number 171, page 32
  • After all, a lot of old standards would judge us all a nation of degenerates, with our phone-gambling and modern art and cereal commercials featuring multiracial families.2026 July 9, Nitsuh Abebe, “Has There Ever Been a Better Time to Be a ‘Degenerate’?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

verbTo lose good or desirable qualities.

  • His condition continued to degenerate even after admission to hospital.
  • The second polar body degenerates, sometimes dividing before it dies.1991, Richard E. Jones, Human Reproductive Biology, page 181
  • Cumaratunga was so furious that he intensified his campaign for revitalizing the traditional practices of asweddumization, so that neglected arable land could be rehabilitated, and a degenerating economy restructured and rejuvenated.1992, Alavattāgoḍa Pēmadāsa, Cumaratunga, the Unknown: Hidden Facets of His Scientific Profile, page 115

More sentences with degenerate

  • In pseudohypertrophic paralysis, the muscles are apparently enlarged, but are really degenerated and replaced by fat.From the entry pseudohypertrophic
  • People would suffer disasters when society's morality degenerates.From the entry disaster
  • The campaign degenerated into mutual mudslinging, each candidate trying to tarnish the other's reputation and looking bad in the process.From the entry mudslinging
  • A selected few of them exploded in supernoval splenditude and degenerated into neutron stars.2019, Richard L. Newell, “Episode Three: Tale of the Telltale Tail”, in Patriot Children: A Four-Part Family-Oriented Science Fiction…. From the entry splenditude
  • The third positions of Met and Trp codons are also zerofold degenerate sites.2018, Naruya Saitou, “Evolutionary Distances”, in Introduction to Evolutionary Genomics (Computational Biology), 2nd edition, Springer…. From the entry zerofold
  • The Abominites, highly degenerate forms, we divide into the Cretininae (Clenchpoops, viz.2016, Stanislaw Lem, The Star Diaries. From the entry outchested
  • The atmosphere was degenerating and then the girls decided it was time to leave on mass.2016, Shane Blackman, “The emotional imagination: exploring critical ventriloquy […]”, in Shane Blackman, Michelle Kempson, editors, The…. From the entry on mass
  • It is also useful when using degenerate primers which may misprime and cause nonspecific products.2007, Ralph Rapley, John M. Walker, Molecular Biomethods Handbook, page 310. From the entry misprime
  • This is why some observers argue that German parliamentarism has degenerated.2000, Werner J. Patzelt, “What can an Individual MP Do in German Parliamentary Politics?”, in Reuven Y. Hazan, Lawrence D. Longley…. From the entry parliamentarism
  • By the power of Usenetiquette, the thread has degenerated into a spelling flame and is hereby dead.1995 July 7, Brent Burton, “Child Cyclist gets killed....”, in rec.bicycles.soc (Usenet). From the entry Usenetiquette
  • Dialectics degenerates into its contrary (as it does later in neo-Hegelian irrationalism), into alogism.1976, Bernard Bykhovskii, Kierkegaard, →ISBN, page 10. From the entry alogism
  • Most Integrationists do not see America as a powerful but degenerate world imperialist.1968 September–October, S. E. Anderson, “Roads to Black Liberation: The Fragmented Movement”, in Negro Digest, volume 17, numbers 11–12…. From the entry blackfolk
  • "When found, the expelled elements may be gonial cells or oocytes, normal or rarely degenerating."1932, Tso-hin Cheng, The Germ Cell History of Rana Cantabrigensis Baird, page 558. From the entry gonial
  • Greek art and culture, which had become international, degenerated to mere virtuosity, empty of any ideal.1929, Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, page 93. From the entry virtuosity
  • But the gods, lacking the criticism of his Comic Spirit, rapidly degenerated, and soon fell to earth.1912 G. M. TREVELYAN (in notes to The Poetical Works of George Meredith). From the entry Momus
  • We prove that certain degenerate abelian varieties, the compactified Jacobian of a nodal curve and a stable quasiabelian variety, satisfy autoduality.2015, Jesse Leo Kass, “Autoduality holds for a degenerating abelian variety”, in arXiv. From the entry quasiabelian
  • Indian democracy is fast degenerating into a psephocracy — a system totally dominated by electoral victories and defeats.2008, June 24th–30th: Ashis Nandy and Sheela Reddy, “Democracy is now psephocracy”, in Outlook, volume 48, number 26, page 89. From the entry psephocracy
  • But after his period, Goryeo's Buddhism had so rapid a tendency of incantationism and formalism that it was degenerated.2007, Pyŏng-jo Chŏng, History of Korean Buddhism, page 89. From the entry incantationism
  • The reasoning usually goes along the lines: ' Talk shows, which started out innocently, have degenerated into ambush television'.2002, Toni Johnson-Woods, Big Bother, page 210. From the entry ambush television
  • If not naturally vicious, a scug was considered degenerate.1969, Ralph G. Martin, Jennie: the Life of Lady Randolph Churchill: The romantic years, 1854-1895, Prentice-Hall, page 54. From the entry scug
  • Whenever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism.1951, Albert Einstein, letter to Maurice Solovine (Jan. 1), in Letters to Solovine. From the entry empiricism
  • The lady's step would then need to be drastically foreshortened, and would degenerate into a heel turn—not infrequent with beginners.1951, Dancing Times, London: Dancing Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 235, column 2. From the entry heel turn
  • Thus the idea of Mother went being degenerated.1940, Mârkand R. Dholakiâ, “Hindu Conception of Mother”, in Mother and Mother’s Thousand Names: Mâi and Mâi Sahasranâma, volume I (Parts I…. From the entry vindictivity
  • Discipleship is a degenerating process to all parties concerned.1927, Elbert Hubbard, The Notebook of Elbert Hubbard: Mottos, Epigrams, Short Essays, Passages, Orphic Sayings and Preachments: Coined…. From the entry more or less
  • In older cases, it may be distinctly sclerosed, with much hyaline connective tissue, and many newly-formed but degenerate elastic fibres.1906, John M. Cowan, “The Current Theories Regarding the Causation of Arterio-Sclerosis”, in The Practitioner, 76: 323. From the entry newly-formed
  • That the people of Rome were able to indulge this degenerate desire was merely due to the degraded status of the professional gladiator.2010, Alison Futrell, Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power, University of Texas Press, →ISBN, page 169. From the entry blood
  • But this governance exercise quickly degenerated into a cash grab exercise (fundamentally corrupting the original purposes), when deficit and debt reduction became the categorical imperative.2010, Ruth Hubbard, Gilles Paquet, The Black Hole of Public Administration, →ISBN, page 294. From the entry cash grab

Meaning of degenerate

  1. adjective Having deteriorated, degraded or fallen from normal, coherent, balanced and desirable to undesirable and typically abnormal.
  2. adjective Having lost good or desirable qualities; hence also having bad character or habits, base, immoral, corrupt.
  3. adjective Having lost functionality in general.

Full definition of degenerate

Questions about degenerate in a sentence

How do you use degenerate in a sentence?
Degenerate is used as an adjective, noun and verb. For example: “The genetic code is degenerate because a single amino acid can be coded by one of several codons.”
What is a short sentence with degenerate?
“People would suffer disasters when society's morality degenerates.”
What does degenerate mean?
Degenerate means having deteriorated, degraded or fallen from normal, coherent, balanced and desirable to undesirable and typically abnormal.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: degenerate (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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