degenerate
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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“Disneyland is tiny compared with the U.S. capital markets, and that goes into the degenerate economy.”
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 21, 2026
I’m kind of glad that I’m not so much of a degenerate anymore.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 25, 2026
These stellar remnants behave in unusual ways, since their internal structure makes them shrink as they gain mass, which is why they are known as degenerate stars.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 2, 2025
That it no longer seems to be leaves us all morally degenerate.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2025
“I see. Now I am being compared to a degenerate old female fraud. Worse, I am losing in the comparison. My own mother daring to malign me so.”
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
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“You don’t need to worry about presenting a certain way or being perceived in a certain way. All the characters in ‘The Pineapple’ are degenerates, and this show invites you to become one as well.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2026
As the valve tissue degenerates, the thin flaps that should meet neatly can thicken, stretch, or lose their normal shape.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 12, 2026
“When my dad’s wife died a couple of years back, it was those rave degenerates who were there for me,” she says.
From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2024
One commentor suggested we were all members of the illuminati, or the Freemasons, who gathered with other well-heeled or well-connected degenerates to prove to ourselves that we were above the common herd.
From Slate ● May 27, 2023
“If our search degenerates to that level I’ll be sure to call on you,” I said without looking in his direction.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
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By 2024, my hobby was starting to feel like work, and it was only a matter of time before the sport degenerated enough to make it official.
From Slate ● Jun. 14, 2026
Wingtech representatives responded that the Dutch intervention was "incomprehensible" and meant the row "degenerated needlessly".
From Barron's ● Feb. 11, 2026
Hilary prompted the first-ever tropical storm watches and warnings in California, but officials now say it had degenerated into a post-tropical low when it hit.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 24, 2024
“As a result, the storm lost tropical characteristics and degenerated to a post-tropical cyclone over northern Baja California,” the new analysis said.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 22, 2024
“He had to move back,” Yossarian argued in a vain effort to cheer up the glum, barrel-chested Indian, whose well-knit sorrel-red face had degenerated rapidly into a dilapidated, calcareous gray.
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
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Not to get too philosophical, but everything alive is degenerating.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 13, 2026
A subtle pathos, along with the playwright’s verbal sophistication, prevents the play from degenerating into a collegiate vaudeville.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 29, 2025
In many neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, the neurons start degenerating at a very early stage -- sometimes years before other brain regions begin to falter.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 17, 2023
“The idea that the Y is still degenerating and destined to disappear is really scotched by this.”
From Science Magazine ● Aug. 23, 2023
Abd-er-Rahmān II. inherited his father's talent for enjoyment, but not that strength of character by which self-indulgence was preserved from degenerating into weakness.
From The Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole
Vocabulary lists containing degenerate
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" Speech (1963)
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