“Degrade”

Who or what has been degraded under President Bush’s watch?

Iraqi prisoners? Check.

Guantanamo detainees? Check.

Hezbollah’s military capability? Getting there.

The word “degrade” — which Merriam-Webster Online defines as “to lower in grade, rank or status” and to bring “into disrepute” — has been promoted to mean demilitarization, particularly of the extremist Shiite group. As of Friday, The Times has made at least six such mentions; the Washington Post, four; and the New York Times, 14. As Israeli bombs fell, news outlets dropped the D word on Hezbollah nearly 200 times in the last month, with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer a frequent user.

Bush probably doesn’t mind the word’s transformation from moralistic to militaristic — President Clinton sure didn’t, because he made the switch himself.

After having degraded, according to various accusers, himself, his family, his office, Monica Lewinsky, cigars and the Gap, Clinton lashed out at Iraq, ordering airstrikes in December 1998 that were “designed to degrade [Saddam Hussein’s] capacity to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction, and to degrade his ability to threaten his neighbors.”

The good news for both presidents? Unlike destroy, decimate or even dispatch, you can’t quantify degrade. The bad news? The word’s moral overtones probably won’t disappear any time soon, considering they’ve been around since the medieval era, when “degrade” meant to demote clergy by order of the Catholic Church. — Swati Pandey