Idiom or better yet a word for loss of fidelity by copying

Is there a word for describing the loss of fidelity or quality by repeated copying. I'm thinking of a xerox of a xerox, or a copy of a copy, or of the phenomena that happens when playing the game of telephone, where the original spoken phrase is distorted after being passed around a group of people.


When you make copies of copies, the quality will progressively degrade. This degradation is known as generation loss.

degrade (v.)

To lower to an inferior or less effective level

Degrade the image quality m-w

Lower the quality of; cause to deteriorate.

Repeaters clean up and amplify the degraded signal. Lexico

generation loss (n.)

Generation loss is the loss of quality between subsequent copies or transcodes of data. Anything that reduces the quality of the representation when copying, and would cause further reduction in quality on making a copy of the copy, can be considered a form of generation loss. File size increases are a common result of generation loss, as the introduction of artifacts may actually increase the entropy of the data through each generation.
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Successive generations of photocopies result in image distortion and degradation. Wiki


In the past, this always involved combining images from two or more pieces of film onto one. However, each time you copy an image, its quality degrades, much like making a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. Ron Miller; Digital Art

Furthermore, photocopies degrade in quality over generations. Gary Marchionini; Information Seeking in Electronic Environments

Another factor that should be taken into consideration is "generation." Photocopies do lose a certain amount of detail. In a first generation photocopy this loss of detail might amount to little more than an annoyance, but by the third or fourth generation copy the loss of detail might already preclude an examination. Jay Levinson; Questioned Documents

(Think of making a photocopy of a photocopy and you'll immediately understand generation loss.) C. Hausman and P. Palombo; Modern Video Production

The children's game of Telephone is a classic example of how messages degrade in an analog chain of communication. Diana Saco; Cybering Democracy

As anyone who has played the children's game “telephone" will attest, information will degrade over time, losing order and gaining entropy. David Toomey; The New Time Travelers

The mentor system allowed mistakes to accumulate and be passed on so that the quality of medical practice was degraded through a process akin to Chinese whispers. Charles Buck; Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine

(No telephones back then, and where better to whisper in Chinese?)


Distortion is a related term. For images, it often refers to a twisting (think torque) or lack of proportionality:

distortion (n.)

1 The act of twisting or altering something out of its true, natural, or original state: the act of distorting

a distortion of the facts

2 the quality or state of being distorted: a product of distorting: such as

a. physics: a lack of proportionality in an image resulting from defects in the optical system

an image free of distortion

b. falsified reproduction of an audio or video signal (see SIGNAL entry 1 sense 4b) caused by change in the wave form of the original signal m-w


Corruption can occur as something is copied, e.g.

Even the best of scribes could easily succumb to any of these errors by accident, corrupting their manuscript without knowing...

https://sites.dartmouth.edu/ancientbooks/2016/05/24/medieval-book-production-and-monastic-life