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

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

From Time Magazine Archive

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

But, after all, he is a striking illustration of Plato's saying, that "Princes are never without flatterers to seduce them, ambition to deprave them, and desires to corrupt them."

From Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History by Horne, Charles F. (Charles Francis)

Yes, for it is demonstrated that, instead of correcting, your penitentiary system depraves; instead of ameliorating, it renders worse; instead of curing slight moral defects, it renders them incurable.

From The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 5 of 6 by Sue, Eugène

Such teaching is interesting as showing how the admission of caprice in the world of phenomena reacts upon the moral sense and depraves our conception of God and salvation.

From Christian Mysticism by Inge, William Ralph

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 Gardiner, A. G. (Alfred George)

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 Stowe, Harriet Beecher

It is the masters of slaves, not the slaves, who are deficient in self-rule; and slavery is doubly detestable, because it depraves the masters.

From Phases of Faith Passages from the History of My Creed by Newman, Francis William

He seemed to savor the chance to go deeper, to look more closely at our innate capacity for acts both moral and depraved.

From Salon ● Jul. 17, 2026

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

From Slate ● Mar. 30, 2026

“I apologize to all who were hurt by this clearly terrible and depraved individual.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 11, 2026

"It leaves me with a pit in my stomach. It's disgusting, it's depraved, it's exploitative, it's utterly disrespectful."

From BBC ● Feb. 7, 2026

“The quality or condition of being depraved or corrupt, ” Rahel read, with a row of sternmouthed nuns seated behind her and a sea of sniggering schoolgirl faces in front.

From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy

I sought to make her conceive of our nation as a family, where every one was secured against want by the common provision, and against the degrading and depraving inequality which comes from want.

From Through the Eye of the Needle A Romance by Howells, William Dean

No one can fail to recognise the depraving influence of a corrupt imagination; and the corruption may spring, not only from suggestions from without, but from those which rise spontaneously in our minds.

From The Map of Life Conduct and Character by Lecky, William Edward Hartpole

Depravā′tion, act of depraving: state of being depraved: depravity.—adj.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 1 of 4: A-D) by Various

If the American practice were half as depraving as it ought logically to be in their conditions, their social system would drop to pieces.

From Through the Eye of the Needle A Romance by Howells, William Dean

Besides, how much slovenly thinking, which is slovenly expressed—vexing the public ear and depraving the taste and understanding of the reader—would never appear if the writer had to append his signature to his production?

From Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Holyoake, George Jacob