Mr Peter Bonnett from Downham Market, Norfolk, appeals to me as ‘The Spectator’s custodian of language’. God forbid! I have troubles enough!
Mr Bonnett is worried about the prevalent confusion between deprecate and depreciate, and I had just written down my deprecatory exclamations when what should I come across in the fat OED but a quotation from 1631, from proceedings in the Court of Star Chamber: ‘My Lord Keeper answered with a deprecation: God forbid that Norfolke should be divided in custome from all England.’ Well! Koestler, thou shouldst be living at this hour!
I have now used up my allowance of exclamation marks for the year.
Deprecate, barring obsolete usages, means either ‘pray against evil’ (to ward it off) or ‘to express earnest disapproval of’. Depreciate means ‘dwindle’ (principally with money, I find) or ‘belittle’. So is it not a sin and a shame to say ‘self-deprecating’ instead of ‘self-depreciating’? One would think so.
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