I'm working on an implementation of RFC6330 (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6330), and in section 5.4.2.2 it says, "If r != 2, then choose a row with exactly r nonzeros in V with minimum original degree among all such rows..."
In this context V is a submatrix, and it's describing how to choose a row from that submatrix. However, I'm not familiar with the term "original degree" of the row of a matrix. Some Googling suggests this is a term specific to coding theory, but I can't figure out how it's defined.