debase

These stories tell us that Diogenes was chased out of his native Sinope, on the north coast of what’s now Turkey, for his supposed role in a scheme to debase the city’s currency.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 17, 2025

“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Trump said, then he proceeded to debase a journalist who wasn’t there to report on the event because he’d been silenced, forever.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 20, 2025

Trust me, I’ve made the mistake of debating perhaps the world’s most infamous anti-vaccine figure, and all it does is debase science and harm the public.

From Scientific American ● Jun. 29, 2023

The word has the pretense of a neutral reference, but is increasingly used to debase and belittle the underlying meaning of anti-racism and anti-bigotry.

From Salon ● May 5, 2021

“His trust! That—that—man . . .” He deserved to be called worse, but in the wood-paneled office, I couldn’t debase myself to use the words that were on the tip of my tongue.

From "The Red Car to Hollywood" by Jennie Liu

In order to emerge victorious in his quest to bring the World Cup to Mexico, De la Torre debases himself and backstabs shamelessly.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 4, 2026

He added that such vocabulary "debases America itself".

From BBC ● Feb. 22, 2024

It debases all of us when it is reduced to a few letters and numbers — and, worse, perpetuates injustice when used on a systemic level.

From Salon ● Mar. 15, 2021

And that vision, that fight, in the midst of everything that degrades and debases you, you pull upon community, you pull upon cultural power, you pull upon your spirituality, and you pull upon hope.

From Slate ● Oct. 6, 2020

It is so simple a fact and one that is so hard, apparently, to grasp: Whoever debases others is debasing himself.

From "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin

Whereas the European gothic, he concludes, was “an enlightened attack on a debased ruling class or entrenched superstition,” its American version emerged as “a Calvinist exposé of natural human corruption.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026

The very concepts of intellectualism, and of objective knowledge itself, have been debased by a kind of Gresham’s Law, with the bad driving out the good.

From Salon ● Apr. 19, 2026

The most debased and tragic is Jeff, who, with his wife, has worked at the fair for decades.

From New York Times ● May 30, 2024

Meanwhile, the tenor of public debate was steadily debased.

From BBC ● Mar. 18, 2023

The remarks grew ever more debased and treacherous so that Mr Charles - at least so he claimed - was obliged to intervene with the suggestion that such talk was bad form.

From "The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro

Robbie’s most deliciously debasing scene is when she throws coins on the ground for a desperate beggar — and then that person forces her to watch as he picks them up.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 11, 2026

Institutions, acting in their own interest, are debasing America’s pool of young, human capital.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 30, 2025

Dismissing the case, Mr Justice Chamberlain said Yaxley-Lennon's own barrister had accepted there was no evidence his client had been segregated "for the purpose of breaking his resistance or humiliating or debasing him".

From BBC ● Mar. 21, 2025

And I just remember being like, “Oh my God. I feel so bad for debasing you.”

From Washington Post ● Sep. 20, 2022

For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and miserable fears to contemplate the divine ideas of liberty and self-sacrifice of which these sights were the monuments and the remembrancers.

From "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley