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What is "debase"

Crossword clues for debase

debase
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
debase
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
currency
▪ By adding base metals, the leaders debased the currency, hurting its value, and fueling inflation.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a debased currency
▪ Our society has been debased by war and corruption.
▪ Women were forced to debase themselves by selling their bodies.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Agit-poppers convinced themselves that rock was archaic and debased, no longer capable of functioning as a medium for radical comment.
▪ By adding base metals, the leaders debased the currency, hurting its value, and fueling inflation.
▪ Even the love of Troilus and Cressida is debased by the Trojan atmosphere, and misplaced values.
▪ This whole extravaganza is demeaning, debasing and deeply damaging to what should be serious political discourse, the protesters complain.
▪ To deny the truth on grounds of faith alone debases both science and religion.
▪ To do so would be to debase them by turning them into commodities.
▪ Who is watching me in my current debased condition?
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Debase

Debase \De*base"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Debased; p. pr. & vb. n. Debasing.] [Pref. de- + base. See Base,

  1. , and cf. Abase.] To reduce from a higher to a lower state or grade of worth, dignity, purity, station, etc.; to degrade; to lower; to deteriorate; to abase; as, to debase the character by crime; to debase the mind by frivolity; to debase style by vulgar words.

    The coin which was adulterated and debased.
    --Hale.

    It is a kind of taking God's name in vain to debase religion with such frivolous disputes.
    --Hooker.

    And to debase the sons, exalts the sires.
    --Pope.

    Syn: To abase; degrade. See Abase.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
debase

1560s, from de- "down" + base (adj.) "low," on analogy of abase (or, alternatively, from obsolete verb base "to abuse").

Wiktionary
debase

vb. 1 (context transitive English) To lower in character, quality, or value; to degrade. 2 (context transitive archaic English) To lower in position or rank.''Oxford English Dictionary'', 2nd ed., 1989. 3 (context transitive English) To lower the value of (a currency) by reducing the amount of valuable metal in the coins.

WordNet
debase

  1. v. corrupt morally or by intemperance or sensuality; "debauch the young people with wine and women"; "Socrates was accused of corrupting young men"; "Do school counselors subvert young children?"; "corrupt the morals" [syn: corrupt, pervert, subvert, demoralize, demoralise, debauch, profane, vitiate, deprave, misdirect]

  2. lower in value by increasing the base-metal content [syn: alloy]

  3. corrupt, debase, or make impure by adding a foreign or inferior substance; often by replacing valuable ingredients with inferior ones; "adulterate liquor" [syn: adulterate, stretch, dilute]

Usage examples of "debase".

The organ of alimentiveness, located directly in front of the ear, indicates the functional conditions of the stomach, which, when aroused by excessive hunger, exerts a debasing influence upon this and all of the adjacent organs, and is demoralizing to both body and mind.

But it will not sustain me through your marriage to Bianca Ingersoll, a woman so unworthy of you that you could as easily have thrown yourself away on Coletta or some other avaricious creature and not debased yourself so completely.

Also there was the weekly collection at the kirk services, where placks and doits and bodles, and a variety of debased coins, clinked in the plate at the kirk door, and there were the fines levied by the Session on evil-doers.

I expect the Lord Remembrancer, if not the Lord Cetic, will soon expose our pharmacologist and debase him.

I felt myself sufficiently debased by my crime, and I could not degrade myself still more by falsehood.

As has been said, the Dewan, recognising the debased ferocity of Hunsa, had promised him the torture when he returned if Bootea had any cause of complaint.

The citizens hated him, not for his favouring the reformers, but for the injury he had caused to trade and for his having bebased the coinage still further than it had been debased by Henry VIII.

Since the days when I had known her at Pasean, nineteen years of misery, profligacy, and shame had made her the most debased, the vilest creature that can be imagined.

He had no sympathies with any measures that would debase or unsettle the currency, and set his face and gave his powerful influence against all forms of fiat or irredeemable paper money, and the kindred folly of the free coinage of silver by this country alone, without the concurrence of the commercial nations of the world.

I am somehow aligned with Gabriel Sandford or the Nast Cabal, let me assure you that I would not debase my reputation with such an association.

Emily, which, amidst the dissipation of the city had been obscured, but never obliterated from his heart, revived with all the charms of innocence and beauty, to reproach him for having sacrificed his happiness and debased his talents by pursuits, which his nobler faculties would formerly have taught him to consider were as tasteless as they were degrading.

I condemned to darkness these charms which this monster of a woman only wished me to enjoy that I might be debased.

Still there are, in every age, a few souls, that all the wants and woes of life cannot debase to selfishness, or even to the necessary alloy of caution and prudence.

Was it because the people themselves, through their individual accumulative system, created conditions whereby only the most abject and debased mortals could survive?

Hers is not a strong or focused talent, and trying for such powerful prehension of the earth debases her to it.