relegation

[ rel-i-gey-shuhn ]

noun

1. assignment or banishment to an inferior position, place, rank, or condition:

   Many factors are responsible for the relegation of disabled people to the margins of society.

   The pending legislation shows the relegation of environmental concerns toward the bottom of the priority list in energy politics.

2. Soccer. demotion to a lower playing league or division based on a team’s record:

   The European leagues are a meritocratic hierarchy connected by promotion and relegation.

Word History and Origins

Origin of relegation¹

First recorded in 1400–50; from Latin relēgātiōn-, stem of relēgātiō “a sending away, banishment”; relegate ( def ), -ion ( def )

Example Sentences

Once relegated to table scraps, many furry companions have transcended the offerings of the supermarket dry goods aisle to eat more like humans do.

From Quartz

These temporal landmarks, the researchers wrote, “act as the start of new mental accounting periods which help us to relegate past imperfections to a previous period and to take a big picture view of our lives, thus motivating aspirational behavior.”

From Outside Online

Innovation can’t be top down or relegated to the corporate tower.

From Digiday

First you had to choose which two points belonged in the cycle of two, while the remaining three points were then relegated to the cycle of three.

From FiveThirtyEight

This relegates physics to the previous century — the golden days when the revolutions of relativity and quantum mechanics shook the world, and the discoveries of elementary particles led to a string of Nobel Prizes.

From Quanta Magazine

Our bookstores would surely be more drab and austere in their absence or their relegation to the annals of world literature.

From The Daily Beast

Hence through the ages, the unconscious relegation of certain presents as acceptable only from certain people.

From Project Gutenberg

But with what quick response of fine pity such a relegation of the man himself made me privately sigh “Ah poor Saltram!”

From Project Gutenberg

His having taken the same great step in the same free way had not in the least involved the relegation of his daughter.

From Project Gutenberg

Then he tells how, as in relegation he was studying verse, suddenly a thunderclap came into his solitude.

From Project Gutenberg

In fact the relegation of peers to the ordinary livery colours for their mantlings is, in England, quite a modern practice.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• banishment
• discharge
• displacement
• ejection
• eviction
• exclusion
• ouster
• purge
• removal
• suspension