depreciate

deprecate, depreciate

1. The two words are similar in form and in current use overlap somewhat in meaning, but their origin is different. Deprecate is from Latin deprecari ‘to prevent by prayer’ and its primary current meaning is ‘to express disapproval of (a person or thing)’:

• When news of this ‘record’ multiple birth emerged last weekend, few dared to deprecate it —Sunday Times, 1987.

Depreciate is from Latin depretiare ‘to lower in value’ and currently means (1) without an object, ‘to become lower in value or price’

• (Experience has shown me that their cars are more reliable and depreciate less —Mail on Sunday, 1985)

and (2) with an object, ‘to undervalue, to disparage’

• (Before this Wilde depreciated pity as a motive in art; now he embraced it —R. Ellmann, 1969).

It is in this last meaning that the overlap in meaning occurs, the intruder normally being deprecate in place of depreciate:

• Dealers have felt a need to deprecate their own firms' values, to disassociate themselves from them —A. Davidson, 1989

• A talent that results in giving exquisite pleasure to collectors of memorabilia is to be admired, not deprecated —M. J. Staples, 1992.

As a result depreciate is being more and more confined to its financial meaning in relation to currencies, share values, etc.

2. This intrusion on the part of deprecate is reflected in the derivative adjectives self-deprecating and self-deprecatory meaning ‘disparaging oneself’, and the noun self-deprecation, where the meanings are closer to depreciate than deprecate:

• Barton…smiled, and then his face changed again, the old, self-deprecating expression over it —Susan Hill, 1971

• Sadly he declined, saying in a charmingly self-deprecatory way that he doubted he had any views worth hearing —L. Kennedy, 1990

• She may arguably be the most successful female chef in Britain, but her modesty and self-deprecation is more akin to that of a fish-and-chip shop-owner —Scotsman, 2007.

These forms and uses are now fully established, although self-depreciation is also occasionally found:

• She [George Eliot] wrote of her ‘isolation’ or ‘excommunication’ from the world and she was prone to morbid self-depreciation —Times, 1996.