peh-JOR-uh-tiv
Definition
(noun/adjective) A word or expression that implies disapproval or conveys a negative or degrading attitude.
Example
The critic’s review was laced with pejoratives — words that seemed neutral on the surface but carried a sting that every reader in the industry immediately recognized.
Word Origin
Pejorative derives from the Late Latin pejorare, meaning “to make worse,” rooted in pejor — “worse” — the comparative form of malus, meaning “bad.” The same root gives us impair, which also carries the sense of something being made worse or diminished. It entered English in the 19th century, used primarily by linguists to describe the process by which words acquire negative connotations over time — a phenomenon so common in language that linguists gave it its own term: pejoration.
Fun Fact
The word silly is one of language’s most dramatic pejorative journeys in reverse — it started out meaning “blessed” or “happy” in Old English (sælig), then shifted to mean “innocent” and “deserving of pity,” then “weak” and “feeble,” before finally landing on its modern meaning of foolish or trivial. Meanwhile villain once simply meant “farmhand” — a feudal peasant worker — before acquiring its current meaning of moral evil entirely through class prejudice, the assumption being that rural laborers were by nature crude and untrustworthy. Language, it turns out, has a long memory for contempt.
