Every time I see that seafood restaurant’s TV commercials describing its delectable-looking shrimp and crabmeat offerings as “decadent,” I retch, figuratively, and tell Miss Peggy: “I’m not eating at any place that serves rotten seafood.”

Decadent (Merriam Webster’s): “Marked by decay or decline.”

Madison Avenue has seized the word and transformed it from an adjective describing physical decay and moral decline to an enticing description of food for the gods.

As a lover of language, I balk at this kind of transformation. “Decadent” came to the English language from the French — no slouches at decadence — who inherited it from a Vulgar Latin word meaning “decay.”

The V2 Vocabulary Building Dictionary illustrates the historic meaning of the word with this sentence: “The decadence of the Roman Empire, exemplified by the devotion of its rulers to sensual pleasures rather than governance, eventually caused its downfall.”

I’m pretty sure that’s where “decadence” acquired its Madison Avenue meaning of “so good it’s sinful.” It’s sort of like Mardi Gras, especially in its New Orleans incarnation: a cornucopia of forbidden fruit. During a brief season on the lip of spring each year, people are told the sinfulness that is preached against for 11 months out of the year is just clean, exuberant fun. So “Laissez les bon temps rouler” — Let the good times roll.

One would think in this day and time, when the economy is wobbling, governors go traipsing off on adulterous flings or put high office up for sale, prime ministers indulge themselves in coteries of prostitutes and government is held in almost universal disdain, people would look elsewhere than a decaying Rome for a role model.

Yet, organizations and enterprises continue to turn to “decadent” as an appropriate description of their products and practices.

A quick Google turned up several examples:

Decadent Designs Bakery in Charlotte, N.C., offers a mouthwatering array of wedding cakes, specialty cakes, traditional cakes, cupcakes, brownies and desserts.

“Find the dessert that will perfectly fit your special occasion,” its website urges, “or your urge for something decadent.”

If you don’t mind, folks, I’ll take one of the yummy desserts you depict on your website. Throw out the decadent stuff for the stray animal with a sweet tooth.

Toronto-based “Decadent Designs” advertises “romantic, elegant couture.” The styles, by self-taught designer Olga Lipnitski, are for “confident women with a sense of adventure, who prefer something different and more dramatic than what the mainstream trends offer.” The designs depicted on the website are indeed audacious, elegant and eye-catching, with scarcely a hint of naughty. I'd almost call them "exquisite,” but not “decadent.”

Then there’s “Decadent Fibers,” described as “Your destination for custom hand-dyed yarns and fibers for all of your knitting, crocheting, needle felting, spinning and weaving needs.”

I saw nothing sinful in any of this, but I’m not sure I would want a garment made of “decadent” fibers. The decayed strands might fray and give way, leaving me standing there in all my aged decadence.

Turtle Mountain Dairy Free Desserts markets an ice cream called “Purely Decadent,” which almost sounds like an oxymoron. I'm sure the dessert is purely fresh and wholesome, and not purely rotten, but the name suggests otherwise.

“Decadent Dog,” which “provides the ultimate in premium canine and feline care,” comes closer to the Roman-orgy meaning of “decadent.” Founded by Rob Nager of Needham, Mass., it offers to sit your pet in the lap of luxury while you’re away. I’m still mourning my decadent dog, a spoiled little mutt who lounged in languid leisure wherever she desired and who was so head-strong in her self-indulgence she flunked out of obedience school. 

On the other hand, “Decadent Ducks,” a Vermont limited-liability corporation, is a social travel group that began by booking guests for the “Southern Decadence Weekend” in New Orleans. “Southern Decadence” is the Labor Day weekend street party that draws 80,000 to 130,000 people to New Orleans, where people can pretend they’re in Rome at the height of its decadence.

But I think the most aptly named product is “Decadent Vapors,” which markets the “electronic cigarette.” Supposedly, it offers all the pleasures of smoking without the tar and social ostracizing. When we bought our latest  home, we went to considerable trouble and expense to rid it of the decadent tobacco odor left by the previous owners. I’m trusting that the “decadent” in “Decadent Vapors” describes its forbidden pleasure and not its decadent aroma.

To my mind, “decadent” describes a drafty, smelly apartment building that has been allowed to deteriorate through the years and is now in need of razing or rehabbing. It describes an environment of moral decay, with or without the opulence of ancient Rome. It describes art and music of a depraved genre.

But it does not conjure in my mind a luscious serving of shrimp or crab legs, a delectable dish of ice cream,  a smart and tasteful wardrobe, or the kind of neighborhood or society in which I would like to live.

I recently saw the word used appropriately in a New York Times article by Ellen Barry. It dealt with the discovery of some Russian art works from the early 20th century that the Bolsheviks had condemned as representing “decadent bourgeois art.” To Lenin, Stalin and company, modern art trends were decadent, and “socialist realism” was the ideal.

I’ve seen socialist realism in its Soviet and Chinese versions on their respective home turfs and I can tell you this: The art, like the political and social systems that produced it, is, well, decadent.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson SC 29625 or at WadesDixieco@AOL.com.