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Definitions

debase

[dih-beys] / dɪˈbeɪs /




Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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Japan is not choosing to debase the yen.

From MarketWatch Jul. 28, 2026

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

As the string score starts having palpitations, “Babygirl” threatens to debase itself by becoming a throwback thriller.

From Los Angeles Times Dec. 24, 2024

It was to debase the language to make it lose its meaning.

From Salon Dec. 27, 2021

And yet, if my best reason for staying in peculiardom didn’t want me anymore, I wouldn’t debase myself by clinging to her.

From "Hollow City" by Ransom Riggs

"Has Mr Putin ever used one crude word to address you? This has never happened. Therefore, I think that such vocabulary debases America itself," he added.

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

Art museum membership is usually pitched as a way to get admission discounts, which debases the museum enterprise as a mere commercial transaction.

From Los Angeles Times Jun. 12, 2019

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

Yet she knows the history that reduced her to such a debased state.

From Los Angeles Times Dec. 15, 2025

Meanwhile, the tenor of public debate was steadily debased.

From BBC Mar. 18, 2023

Working as a lawyer in South Africa meant operating under a debased system of justice, a code of law that did not enshrine equality but its opposite.

From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela

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

The late Roman Empire undermined its commercial economy through centralization, regulation and debasing the currency.

From The Wall Street Journal Aug. 29, 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

How debasing it feels to beg for that macaroni noodle.

From Washington Post Sep. 1, 2022

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




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