deprave

"I don't think you should censor books but there is this strange anomaly - it's common sense that films can deprave and corrupt, and that books can't."

From BBC ● Aug. 31, 2012

It has been 14 years since China officially banned console video games, worrying the living-room boxes would dumb down or deprave the brains of Chinese youth.

From Washington Post

On the contrary it would so deprave our currency that it would bring ruin, particularly to the wage earners of the country and those on fixed salaries.

From Time Magazine Archive

The legal definition of obscenity in Great Britain is that which tends "to deprave and corrupt."

From Time Magazine Archive

Blameless still of arts that polish to deprave.

From Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (2nd 100 Pages) by Noah Webster

Should I select something that shows how war depraves, or something that shows how it ennobles?

From Pebbles on the shore [by] Alpha of the plough by A. G. (Alfred George) Gardiner

This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

From Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1 by Thomas Jefferson Randolph

All outlay devoted to culture, to beauty, to invigoration has dried up; all that survives is what stimulates, what depraves and befouls; frivolities, substitutes and swindles.

From The New Society by Arthur Windham

I. The conflicting evidence, in consequence of hard swearing, prompted by gold-thirst, the most horrible demon that depraves the human heart, even a naturally honest heart.—II.

From The Eureka Stockade by Raffaello Carboni

Sometimes they produce an insufficient performance of it; and this, by closing an avenue of elimination, poisons the blood, and depraves the organization.

From Sex in Education or, A Fair Chance for Girls by Edward Hammond Clarke

She calls for a “fearless reckoning with depraved art and artists,” which brings us back to the cultural cries surrounding us when we picked up this book.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

Yet its parties, even at their most decadent and depraved, were never quite cool.

From Slate ● Mar. 30, 2026

But even people who are really depraved have something they love, he says.

From BBC ● Mar. 7, 2026

Intimately acquainted with Richard’s malignity, these ruined royals know only too well the toll of his depraved machinations.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 26, 2026

I was going to become one of the most depraved parasitical hustlers among New York’s eight million people—four million of whom work, and the other four million of whom live off them.

From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey

The depraving effects of this freedom of divorce upon both sexes, may be easily imagined.

From The Women of the Arabs by Charles S. (Charles Seymour) Robinson

The hardening, deadening power of depraving habits and customs was strikingly illustrated by the Romans.

From Architects of Fate or, Steps to Success and Power by Orison Swett Marden

Second, treason was made to consist in such vague and infinitely elastic kinds of action as inspiring discouragement, misleading opinion, depraving manners, corrupting patriots, abusing the principles of the Revolution by perfidious applications.

From Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) Essay 1: Robespierre by John Morley

There may be slaveries so soft as to invite the base and pusillanimous, but they are more rather than less depraving than cruelties to all that makes honorable and useful manhood.

From The Subterranean Brotherhood by Julian Hawthorne

Truth is the only basis of virtue; and we cannot, without depraving our minds, endeavour to please a lover or husband, but in proportion as he pleases us.

From Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft