Dysgenics

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /dɪsˈdʒɛnɪks/

Definitions

1. The study of the decline in the genetic quality of a population due to harmful conditions or practices
2. An examination of how certain societal influences may lead to a deterioration of inherited traits
3. The analysis of factors that may negatively impact the genetic health of future generations within a society

Etymology: Dysgenics is the counterpart of eugenics, and it was coined to name the opposite of the goal that eugenics set itself. Its structure is simple: the Greek prefix "dys-", meaning bad or ill, attached to the combining form "-genics", from the Greek "genos", meaning birth, race or kind. Read literally, it is the study of ill birth, or of the decline of a population's inherited qualities. Its near-synonym "cacogenics" follows the same pattern, using the Greek "kakos", meaning bad, in place of "dys-". The word belongs to the same early twentieth-century vocabulary as eugenics itself, which Francis Galton coined in 1883. Dysgenics was formed on that model to describe the worry that social conditions, such as poverty, disease or the reproduction of people judged undesirable, might weaken a population over generations. The term therefore describes an idea rather than an established science, and it carries the assumptions of the movement that produced it.

Synonyms: genetic deterioration, devolution, genetic decline, genetic degeneration, biological decline