Adjective

(en adjective)

(of qualities) Having deteriorated, degraded or fallen from normal, coherent, balanced and desirable to undesirable and typically abnormal.

* Shakespeare

faint-hearted and degenerate king

* Jonathan Swift

degenerate from their ancient blood

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-03

, author= , title=The Smallest Cell , volume=101, issue=2, page=83 , magazine= citation , passage=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. This evolutionary trajectory assumes the simplicity to complexity route of biogenesis, a point of view that is not universally accepted.}}

(of a human or system) Having lost good or desirable qualities.

(of an encoding or function) Having 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.

(mathematics) A degenerate case is a limiting case in which a class of object changes its nature so as to belong to another, usually simpler, class.

(physics) Having the same quantum energy level.