Definition:
The downgrading or depreciation of a word's meaning, as when a word with a positive sense develops a negative one.
Pejoration is much more common that the opposite process, called amelioration.
See also:
Etymology:
From the Latin, "worse"Examples and Observations:
- "The word silly is a classic example of pejoration, or gradual worsening of meaning. In early Middle English (around 1200), sely (as the word was then spelled) meant 'happy, blissful, blessed, fortunate,' as it did in Old English. . . .
"The original meaning was followed by a succession of narrower ones, including 'spiritually blessed, pious, holy, good, innocent, harmless.' . . .
"As the form (and pronunciation) sely changed to silly in the 1500s, the earlier meanings passed into increasingly less favorable senses such as 'weak, feeble, insignificant.' . . . By the late 1500s, the word's use declined to its present-day meaning of 'lacking good sense, empty-headed, senseless, foolish,' as in 'This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard' (1595, Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream)."
(Sol Steinmetz, Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meanings. Random House, 2008) - "Hierarchy shows a similar, though more pronounced, deterioration. Originally applied to an order or a host of angels from the fourteenth century, it has steadily moved down the scale of being, referring to 'a collective body of ecclesiastical rulers' from c. 1619, from whence the similar secular sense develops c.1643 (in Milton's tract on divorce). . . . Today one frequently hears of 'the party hierarchy,' 'business hierarchies,' and the like, denoting only the top of the hierarchy, not the whole order, and conveying the same nuances of hostility and envy implied in elite."
(Geoffrey Hughes, Words in Time: A Social History of the English Vocabulary. Basil Blackwell, 1988) - "[U]sing language to 'spin' may worsen the meaning of the substituted language, a process linguists call 'pejoration.' That has happened to the previously innocuous adjective discreet, when used in 'personal' columns as a euphemism for illicit sexual meetings. A recent Wall Street Journal article quoted the customer service manager of an online dating service as saying he banned the use of discreet from his service because 'it's often code for "married and looking to fool around."' The site is for singles only."
(Gertrude Block, Legal Writing Advice: Questions and Answers. William S. Hein, 2004)
Pronunciation: PEDGE-e-RAY-shun
Also Known As: deterioration, degeneration
