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For at least a year and half, I read "deprecated" as "depreciated", even when writing it down myself, I would spell it as "depreciated", even though pretty much every time I read it, it was spelt correctly (the intended meaning, was the meaning of "deprecated").

(When I finally spoke the word in conversation, obviously in the wrong context, and got told I should use deprecated, I was somewhat freaked out, especially after reading the same material I previously had, only to find it had all magically changed.)

I see from Stack Overflow I'm not the only one: https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=depreciated

Can depreciated have a similar meaning to deprecated in any circumstances? (And why after reading it spelt correctly so many times, or just after the first, would I say it in my head and write it down incorrectly?)

Secondly, what is the difference between deprecated and obsolete?

livresque
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Jonathan.
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The main difference is that deprecate is largely archaic, apart from its very modern computing sense. The original meaning (derived from Latin de=away, and prevari=pray) meant to ward something off (by prayer, for example). It can also be used to mean to express disapproval of; deplore; belittle, but IMHO this is also dated/poetic usage outside computing. I also suspect it's used as something of a euphemism for denigrate, which to some people is uncomfortably close to the n-word.

Deprecated is normally used today for some feature of a computer language which is still supported, but no longer recommended. It may not be supported at some time in the future, because it doesn't fit well with the way the language is being developed.

There's no substantive difference in meaning between deprecated and obsolete for that "no longer recommended" computer sense. But obsolete is used in far more contexts than deprecated, and can sometimes imply "no longer capable of being used", rather than just "not recommended".

Depreciated, on the other hand, derives from Latin pretium=price. It's used of things which have reduced in value over time.

TL;DR: People either confuse the words because they don't know what they mean, or because they don't notice the extra letter "i" in one of them.

FumbleFingers
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    I would argue that there is a qualitative difference between "deprecated" and "obsolete". Something can continue to be useful, but it's not encouraged. It might never be supplanted by something else to make it obsolete. – Andrew Vit Oct 15 '11 at 23:55
  • @Andrew Vit: Both "deprecated" and "obsolete" imply there's a newer alternative which is either better right now, or will be better soon. But in both cases there's also the implication that the older method/product does still work, and the implication that the user should "upgrade". If there's a difference, I don't think that's it. – FumbleFingers Oct 16 '11 at 02:46
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    I don't think deprecate is archaic. I see "self-deprecation" and "self-deprecatory humour" frequently enough. (It's not actually self-depreciation, is it?) – ShreevatsaR Oct 16 '11 at 03:04
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    @ShreevatsaR: I certainly wouldn't call the self- forms archaic, but I do think they're a little poetic/flamboyant/dated. Not much, though. – FumbleFingers Oct 16 '11 at 03:25
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    +1 for an excellent answer, but one extra point which I think is in play: both these words are fairly unusual, so when people are wavering between the two, I suspect depreciated gets a big boost from the analogy with appreciated, which is much more common than either. – PLL Oct 16 '11 at 13:46
  • @PLL: I can appreciate what you're saying there. Not that I personally would depreciate your point if I didn't understand/agree with you, but it's easy to see how less fluent speakers might do that. – FumbleFingers Oct 16 '11 at 13:56
  • Actually… doing some Ngramming, the results are very interesting, comparing different forms of appreciate,depreciate,deprecate. For most forms (-ate, -ates, -ated), appreciate wins out by about 4–10x, while depreciate beats deprecate, but not by nearly as much as I would have expected. For -ation, depreciation comes up much higher — about half as common as appreciation — while deprecation is almost unknown. Conversely, with -ating, deprecating beats out depreciating, and more strongly in recent years — largely in self-deprecating as @ShreevatsaR suggests. – PLL Oct 16 '11 at 14:00
  • @PLL: The one I'd have bet the farm on is deprecated/depreciated, where I've no doubt the former has shot up in the last decade or so. It's not that clear in NGrams, partly because they haven't got much post-2000 stuff indexed yet. But on standard Google, deprecated today gets over ten times more hits, whereas the present tense deprecate doesn't even get three times more than depreciate. That's because in the modern computer sense, deprecated is used more like an adjective than a past participle. – FumbleFingers Oct 16 '11 at 14:26
  • @FumbleFingers: I have to disagree with your implication of "newer alternative". Obsolete means it's old. Maybe there is a newer alternative or it's not needed at all any longer. OTOH, deprecated is just "unpreferred". A direct memory drawing may be deprecated because using the high-level API is vastly easier and safer, but if you absolutely must have the extreme write speeds of direct write, you'll choose it instead nevertheless, and it's not going to go anywhere - it's still the only and correct way to get correct results in specific situations. – SF. Nov 13 '12 at 15:14
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    @SF.: The original meaning (now, effectively obsolete :) of deprecate was a lot stronger than simply "unpreferred" (it meant you earnestly prayed for it not to exist). So I think the word today only has meaning in the computer context, where it always means There's a better method available now. This old method is currently still supported, but be warned that it might not be in future. And so far as obsolete is concerned, I think there's always the implication that an obsolete thing has been replaced by something newer and better. – FumbleFingers Nov 13 '12 at 15:43
  • Although correct and objective aside from the stated opinion about the value of the word deprecate, I think this answer ignores the context of the original poster. The "very modern computer sense" is the entire context of the question. In software development, deprecated is widely used. The word has a commonly understood meaning and is even clearly defined as an official term in many standards and API documents. The word depreciated is not used in this context, but is often used when discussing subjects with a financial value. – Vince Apr 29 '21 at 04:56
  • @Vince: Having used MS development software for many decades, I'm intimately familiar with *deprecated* as used in *its very modern computing sense* - as referred to in the very first sentence of my answer. But obviously there wouldn't be any scope for the "confusion" OP asks about if it were not for that modern (revived) sense, because the word "deprecated" would hardly ever get used anyway! – FumbleFingers Apr 29 '21 at 11:58
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The dictionary gives "belittle" as a synonym for both words. As FumbleFingers points out, "deprecate" means to "pray away" and "depreciate" means to "price away", so they aren't that far apart.

Michael Lorton
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People get confused because the spellings of the two words are nearly identical. When we read, we don't read every individual character, we just process a few letters and make a guess.

That may sound like I'm pointing out the obvious, but it gets a bit more interesting. The spelling difference between "deprecated" and "depreciated" is towards the center of the two words, which turns out to be the real problem. A study was done at Cambridge University which showed it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.

Edit: It appears that the study was never actually conducted, and the claim is not true as stated, but there is still some truth to it.

Intuitively it still seems to me that altering letters in towards the middle of a word would have less of an effect than altering the extremities, especially the first letter. Unfortunately I don't know of any reputable study to support my claim, so I'll leave it at that.

Edit2: Snopes lists this as undetermined.

Jordan Bentley
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    That study is now depreciated - it mostly only works for words that are short. – mgb Oct 16 '11 at 02:44
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    @MartinBeckett It's not depreciated, if anything it's apprecated. – Jordan Bentley Oct 16 '11 at 02:53
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    BTW, if you click the link you'll find that actually no such study was done at Cambridge University. And it's not true that only the first and last letter matter; try the "The sprehas had ponits and patles" sentence that's near the bottom of the page. This has been discussed before on English.SE. – ShreevatsaR Oct 16 '11 at 03:44
  • @ShreevatsaR Damn...so disillusioning. – Jordan Bentley Oct 16 '11 at 04:17
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    But do read your link for lots interesting stuff on the importance of letter position and word recognition, including a literature review and a PhD on this. – Hugo Oct 16 '11 at 04:34
  • @ShreevatsaR: Dang! It took me the best part of a minute to figure out even the sherpas/pitons/plates reading, and until I followed your link it never occured to me there could be several alternatives. That isn't the only ELU post about this though, because I know I commented on one a few months back, and it's not the one you linked to. But I'll never find it with the current site search facilities, I know. – FumbleFingers Oct 16 '11 at 13:47