"Degradated"???

[Mark Odegard]

David Barnhart:
>_degredate_ reminds me of _orientate_ a bit.

The pattern certainly does. The question is if 'degradate' has a different
sense from 'degrade', a la the difference between orient and orientate. To
orientate is is what new students or new employees undergo, an introduction
to bureaucratic procedures, while to orient is to relate yourself to your
actual physical position in relation to your surroundings.

'To degrade' has the sense of 'to reduce in rank or function'.

If there is a distinction with 'degradate' it would be something like
'erosion of function, as a continuous process', with degrade being something
abrupt. It could also perhaps be a distinction of between actual persons and
inaminates things or processes, i.e., persons are degraded but things are
degradated.

More interesting is the fact that English seems to have formed a regular
rule that all nouns in -ation automatically back-form a verb in -ate. But
when a verb already exists, it seems we rummage around to come up with a
distinction. Thus, I speculate this 'rule' means that all such (otherwise
synonymous) verbs back-forming from -ation have the default sense of
describing the process expressed by the noun.


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