Used in modern times of a person who has low moral standards, or who behaves in a way that is shocking to others. I’ll Take Manhattan, by Judith Krantz, has a girl saying to her brother, in a friendly way: ‘Take your hands off me, you...

Degeneracy (for the quality; degeneration for the process; adj. and v. degenerate), from the Latin de-generare "to depart from its kind or genus, to fall from its proper or ancestral quality" can refer...