What does derogated mean?
"Derogated" is the past tense and past participle of the formal verb "derogate", which means to detract from, diminish, or act inconsistently with something — especially a rule, right, principle, or law. In everyday figurative use, saying that an action derogates from someone's dignity means it lessens or impairs that dignity. Its most established home is in legal and political language: to derogate from a treaty or statute is to depart from or partially override its provisions, and human-rights frameworks famously distinguish rights that may be temporarily suspended in emergencies from those that can never be derogated from. The word always takes the preposition "from" and belongs firmly to formal registers; it rarely appears in casual speech. It derives from the Latin derogare, "to diminish or annul", formed from de- ("away") and rogare ("to ask, propose"), the same root behind "arrogate" and "interrogate". Related forms include "derogation", "derogatory", and "derogatively".
verbPast tense and past participle of derogate: to detract from or diminish something, especially its force, value, or authority; in law, to repeal or annul part of a law or agreement.
- (of a rule, statement, or action) to detract from or fail to accord with something; to diminish its force or authority
- (law) to repeal or annul part of a law, treaty, or agreement
"The new clause derogated from the protections guaranteed by the original charter."
"The court held that the emergency decree derogated from the constitutional guarantee of free expression."
"Nothing in the contract shall be construed as derogating from the employee's statutory rights."
In law, some rights are so fundamental that they can never be derogated from — not even in a national emergency.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of derogated
"Derogated" comes from the Latin derogare, meaning "to diminish, detract from, or annul", a compound of de- ("away, down") plus rogare ("to ask, propose"), the same verb that gives us "interrogate" and "prerogative". The English verb entered the language via Latin legal usage in the late Middle Ages, where it described the partial repeal or impairment of a statute. Its cognates include the noun "derogation" and the adjective "derogatory", which shifted toward the sense of expressing a low opinion of someone.
Related word forms
How derogated is actually used
Formal register, used chiefly in legal and diplomatic writing. It is almost always followed by "from". The noun form is "derogation", as in the phrase "derogation of rights".
Easily confused with derogated
"Delegated" means assigned tasks or authority to another person, while "derogated" means diminished or detracted from something's force or standing.
"Denigrated" means criticized unfairly or disparaged, whereas "derogated" chiefly means to lessen the effect, value, or legal force of something.