Example sentence:
People always ended up hating him. This __ not only manifested itself
in matters of friendship, also in his relationship with the opposite
sex.
The closest word I could think of was incidence, but it's not quite right for the context. Is there a better alternative?
Best Answer
degradation, retrogression or regression -
degradation:
Changing to a lower state (a less respected state)
A low or downcast state
"each confession brought her into an attitude of degradation";
(geology) the mechanical process of wearing or grinding something down (as by particles washing over it)
retrogression:
Passing from a more complex to a simpler biological form
A return to an earlier state
regression:
A return to an earlier state
An abnormal state in which development has stopped prematurely
(psychiatry) a defence mechanism in which you flee from reality by assuming a more infantile state
(statistics) the relation between selected values of x and observed values of y (from which the most probable value of y can be predicted for any value of x)
(programming) the reappearance of a software bug that has been fixed at least once before
-- WordWeb Online