Relegating

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The action of assigning a lesser status to someone or something
2. The process of moving something or someone to a position of lesser importance or rank
3. The act of demoting or transferring something to a lower status or category

Etymology: Relegating is the present participle of "relegate," and the verb's story begins with a sense that has nothing to do with rank. In Latin, "relegare" meant to send away, dispatch or banish, built from "re-" (back, away) and "legare" (to send on a mission, to depute). The noun "relegatus" referred to a banished person, an exile, and English borrowed the verb from the past participle of that Latin verb, first recorded in the 1560s. For most of its English life the word kept that exile sense. To relegate someone was to send them off, often into confinement or out of a community, and the idea of moving something downward into a lower category came later, as the physical removal of a person gradually became a figurative removal of a thing from its former place. The present participle "relegating" therefore carries the older image of sending something away, now applied to demotion in rank, status or classification.

Synonyms: assigning, downgrading, demoting

Antonyms: promoting, elevating