DEGRADE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Degrade

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/dɪgrˈeɪd/ Listen

verb

Degrade v. t. (past & past part. degraded; pres. part. degrading)

To reduce from a higher to a lower rank or degree; to lower in rank; to deprive of office or dignity; to strip of honors; as, to degrade a nobleman, or a general officer. "Prynne was sentenced by the Star Chamber Court to be degraded from the bar."

To reduce in estimation, character, or reputation; to lessen the value of; to lower the physical, moral, or intellectual character of; to debase; to bring shame or contempt upon; to disgrace; as, vice degrades a man. "O miserable mankind, to what fall Degraded, to what wretched state reserved!" "Yet time ennobles or degrades each line." "Her pride... struggled hard against this degrading passion."

(Geol.) To reduce in altitude or magnitude, as hills and mountains; to wear down.

Synonyms: To abase; demean; lower; reduce. See Abase.

Degrade v. i. (Biol.) To degenerate; to pass from a higher to a lower type of structure; as, a family of plants or animals degrades through this or that genus or group of genera.

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Etymology of 'Degrade'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Degrade" Quotes from Famous Books

... survivors of the conquest might, perhaps, escape, and carry their wasp-fetish into a new land. But if they became poor and weakly, their brains and imagination, degenerating with their bodies, would degrade their wasp-worship till they knew not what it meant. Away from the sacred tree, in a country the wasps of which were not so large or formidable, they would require a remembrancer of the wasp-king; and ...

— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... be said to have reached almost the last stage of national humiliation. There is scarcely anything that can wound the pride or degrade the character of an independent nation which we do not experience. Are there engagements to the performance of which we are held by every tie respectable among men? These are the subjects of constant ...

— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... principles from which he acts; we suppose that they are the same in kind, only referred to different objects; and we not only misapply the name of love, in conjunction with self, but, in a manner tending to degrade our nature, we limit the aim of this supposed selfish affection to the securing or accumulating the constituents of interest, of the means of ...

— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... possession of landed property by the tyrannous operation of the penal laws. Justly has a celebrated Irish patriot (Theobald Wolfe Tone) spoken of these laws as "an execrable and infamous code, framed with the art and malice of demons to plunder and degrade and brutalize the Catholics of Ireland. There was no disgrace, no injustice, no disqualification, moral, political, or religious, civil or military, which it has not heaped ...

— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... mysticism, or Sacerdotalism, or whatever it may be called, if it's that which has caused this deterioration in you. That a woman-poet, a woman-seer, a woman whose soul shone like a diamond—whom all the wise of the world would have been proud of, if they could have known you—should degrade herself like this! I am glad I had nothing to do with Divinity—damn glad—if it's going to ruin ...

— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

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