Eggcorn Forum

I don’t think many people ever SAY “self-deprecating.” I think it’s one of those terms that is written, but seldom spoken.

And even if it’s not, I think they’d say whatever the “eggcorn” is—they’d say “self-depreciating.”

Actually, “self-depreciating” makes tons of sense. I vote eggcorn.

I vote eggcorn. I’ve heard “depreciating” many times where “deprecate” was clearly the intended word. Having said that, the etymology is doing us no favors. Encarta says:

deprecate or depreciate?

To deprecate something is to condemn it as wrong in itself: We deprecate the use of public money for nonessential purposes. To depreciate something is to belittle or disparage it, even though it may not be wrong or bad in itself: They were constantly depreciating our attempts to speak Italian. This use is increasingly rare. Admittedly, self-deprecate goes a long way toward blurring the distinction, for it means “belittle yourself,” not “condemn yourself”; in this sense it is well established, but it may be best regarded as the exception rather than the rule. Both words have more common synonyms: condemn, deplore, and disapprove of for deprecate, and belittle, disparage, and decry for depreciate. Depreciate is also commonly used intransitively (without an object), in financial contexts, to mean “lose value”: The value of the yen has depreciated 20 percent in real terms.

....as you can see above, a case can be made that either one could be used. Still, in realistic cultural context, I assert that “self-deprecate” is the prevelant idiom and that “self-depreciate” is therefore the eggcorn. As in the case of numerous eggcorns, “deprecate” is a less-used word than “depreciate”. In fact, I can’t think of deprecate’s use in any other common context. “Depreciate”, however, is used in many other instances regarding the value of items, especially cars and homes.

Also, I don’t believe that misspellings or mispronunciations account for enough of the “depreciate” occurances to knock this out of being an eggcorn. “Self-deprecating” is spoken often enough to provide ample opportunity for correction….unless the hearer refuses to believe his ears and substitutes “depreciate” (birth of an eggcorn).

I had always understood that both were correct, and although they mean slightly different things, both make sense in many of the same contexts. Deprecate = express disapproval, deplore; depreciate = belittle. Most cases of self-depre-whatevering are more likely to be (feigned) self-belittlement than real true self-disapproval. Yet the word deprecation is also used often enough in contexts conducive to insincerity that it comes to mean “speak slightingly” rather than truly “deplore”.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2013-01-17 17:10:32)

Here’s an example I encountered yesterday in an online movie discussion:

Luckily for us, Mark Ruffalo stepped in and imbued the Hulk with just the right amount of vulnerability and self-depreciating humour.

Though some of the meanings of “deprecating” and “depreciating” as commonly used are nearly synonymous, I see “self-depreciating” as eggcornish because, for most modern users, the original term was “self-deprecating”, which they somehow morphed into “self-depreciating”. But the n-gram gives an interesting picture: After a brief period of use of “self-deprecating” around 1750, it’s not in evidence again until the 1830s, at which time “self-depreciating” also shows up. “Self-depreciating” is actually more common than “self-deprecating” for the next century! Then, starting in the 1930s, use of “self-deprecating” zooms to a much higher frequency while “self-depreciating” stays at its lower frequency. This sort of change always makes me wonder what the heck happened to create such a shift in usage. I’ll probably never know…

Last edited by Dixon Wragg (2013-05-22 15:45:50)