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''decadent'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320115623-00-⌔

decadent - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

decadent (comparative more decadent, superlative most decadent)

  • Characterized by moral or cultural decline.
    • ✤ Synonyms: corrupted, degenerate; see also Thesaurus: immoral
    • ✤ As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.1
  • Luxuriously self-indulgent.
    • ✤ Synonyms: epicurean, (colloquial) sinful; see also Thesaurus: hedonistic
    • ✤ Surgery in an opera? How wonderfully decadent! And just as I was beginning to lose interest!2

Noun

decadent (plural decadents)

  • A person affected by moral decay.
    • L. Douglas
      • ✤ He had the fastidiousness, the preciosity, the love of archaisms, of your true decadent.

Etymology

From French décadent, a back-formation from décadence (see -ent), from Medieval Latin dēcadentia, from Late Latin dēcadēns, present participle of dēcadō, dēcidō (“sink, fall; perish”), from Latin dē- + cadō (“fall”).3

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈdɛkədənt/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1992, Gore Vidal, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire: ↩

  2. 2003, Hedonismbot in the Futurama episode “The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings” ↩

  3. Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “decadent (adj.)”, in Online Etymology Dictionary. ↩

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Secondary

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