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

Ah! why hath Nature to so hard a hart Given so goodly giftes of beauties grace, Whose pryde depraves each other better part, And all those pretious ornaments deface?

From The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 by Edmund Spenser

For the cessation of the exercise of reason, by no means depraves it.

From Reason, The Only Oracle of Man Or a Compendius System of Natural Religion by Ethan Allen

You make the public statement that calls for his trade, that debauches and depraves him, till he feels no shame in it; and in what are you better than he?

From Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The education of life perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous.—Mme. de Staël.

From Pearls of Thought by Maturin Murray Ballou

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

“The Shards” is more problematic: Mr. Ellis has been recycling his depraved teen angels long enough that the show, a collaboration with Ryan Murphy, becomes parody, even comedy.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026

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

From Slate ● Mar. 30, 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

"His actions were depraved and devious and go against the kindness and care our dedicated professionals provide to children each day."

From BBC ● Feb. 12, 2026

Scenes from my once depraved life lashed through my mind.

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

Too much moral anguish has a depraving effect in the long run.”

From Robert Orange Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange by John Oliver Hobbes

He was cursed with the possession of a power and authority which no man of narrow mind, bitter prejudices, and inordinate self-estimation can exercise without depraving himself as well as injuring the nation.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 by Various

That by a perpetual miracle, Sacred Manuscripts would be protected all down the ages against depraving influences of whatever sort,—was not to have been expected; certainly, was never promised.

From The Revision Revised by John William Burgon

Separated from one another in actual date by 50, perhaps by 100 years,742 they must needs have branched off from a common corrupt ancestor, and straightway become exposed continuously to fresh depraving influences.

From The Revision Revised by John William Burgon

A naive expression used by Agnes was represented as depraving the one; a low and somewhat vulgar phrase was insisted upon as calculated to ruin the other.

From Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 A Series of Pen and Pencil Sketches of the Lives of More Than 200 of the Most Prominent Personages in History by Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne