Originally posted by C Hess
Take three tiny steps sideways and two backwards. Keep doing that for a year and you will still be far from where you began.
I call that degeneration.
Definition of DEGENERATION
1: degenerate condition
2: a lowering of effective power, vitality, or essential quality to an enfeebled and worsened kind of state
3: intellectual, moral, or artistic decline
4a: progressive deterioration of physical characters from a level representing the norm of earlier generations or forms
b: deterioration of a tissue or an organ in which its function is diminished or its structure is impaired
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/degeneration
DEGENERATION
1: a lowering of power, vitality, or essential quality to a feebler and poorer kind or state
2
a: a change in a tissue or an organ resulting in lessened activity or usefulness
<kidney degeneration in old age>
b: a condition marked by degeneration of physical parts (as organs) present in related forms
<tapeworms exhibit extreme degeneration>
http://www.wordcentral.com/cgi-bin/student?book=Student&va=degeneration