A common term in IT used to indicate that a certain feature or method should be abandoned, usually in favour of a specific replacement. The dictionary tends to suggest that "deprecation" is used like "depreciation", but the term correctly means "to express disapproval of". The implication is that the feature or method is considered harmful (for some value of "harmful" depending on the circumstances) and will therefor be removed or no longer supported at some point in the future, though it is still available or supported in an (often far too long) intermediate period to give users a chance to adapt their systems.

See also JargonFile:deprecated.