Pejorative

A word or phrase is a pejorative (occasionally misspelled perjorative) if it expresses contempt or disapproval. The adjective pejorative is synonymous with derogatory and dyslogistic (noun: dyslogism) (antonyms: meliorative, eulogistic, noun eulogism). Dyslogisms such as "pea-brain" and "bottom-feeder" are words and phrases essentially pejorative by their nature. Although pejorative (adj.) means much the same thing as disparaging, the latter term may be applied to a look or gesture as well as to spoken language— in the evocative languages of gesture, it is not easy to distinguish a disparaging gesture from a dismissive or merely skeptical one, however.

Etymology

Unrelated to perjury, pejorative comes from the Latin pejoratus, "made worse," and made a surprisingly late entry in written English, 1882, probably deriving from a contemporary French usage, péjoratif. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=p&p=8. It is so frequently misspelled as perjorative that the Oxford English Dictionary website contains a FAQ entry about this misspelling.

Related Topics:
Perjury - Latin - Oxford English Dictionary - FAQ

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