debase
Example Sentences
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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
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
Just because the world was unjust didn’t mean that I must debase myself as well.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
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
Said corporation's very wealthy owner insults the court and her client, then debases Julius himself after the judge has the man jailed for contempt, which he is well within his rights to do.
From Salon ● May 14, 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
Rather than explore complex issues and troubling experiences by way of sci-fi future-historical fantasy, “Alita: Battle Angel” debases them—and its exemplary character—under the force of a blinkered and reactionary model of drama and business alike.
From The New Yorker ● Feb. 13, 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
A currency is never debased in the hearing.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 15, 2026
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
There will be a new ball this season, the Nike Flight, which is "built with Aerowsculpt technology with grooves debased into the casing, to allow air to travel seamlessly around the ball, delivering truer flight".
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2024
Turner thought about getting to work on conquering his debased self, but decided that could wait till morning.
From "Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy" by Gary D. Schmidt
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
Vocabulary lists containing debase
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"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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