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

Why some are born rich and others poor; some having wealth only to corrupt, defile, deprave others therewith, while meritorious poverty struggles and toils for human betterment all unaided.

From Mystic Christianity by William Walker Atkinson

This faculty is more liable to perversion than any other, and excessive eating occasions more sickness, and depraves the animal faculties more than all other causes combined.

From The Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology by L. N. Fowler

It is not because war kills that it is the devil, but because it depraves; and it is because it depraves that it is condemned by the religious consciousness.

From Home Missions in Action by Edith H. Allen

All around him the fish in their perfect freshness exhaled a pleasant perfume, that slightly sharp, irritating perfume which depraves the appetite.

From The Fat and the Thin by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

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

As to real gallantry, the French style depraves the minds of men least, ours is most favorable to the peace of families.

From The History of Emily Montague by Frances Brooke

However perverse and depraved the ideas that animate the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah, they inspire the kind of conviction that motivates people to fight grimly on against the odds.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 15, 2026

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

From Slate ● Mar. 30, 2026

Judge John Dodd KC told Wood Green Crown Court that Chan was a "perverse and depraved" man who had "clearly lost all sense of moral compass".

From BBC ● Feb. 12, 2026

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

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 11, 2026

Obviously, I would never enter that depraved popularity contest.

From "Dumplin'" by Julie Murphy

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

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

D, that it bears marks throughout of the depraving influence of the ancient Lectionary practice.

From The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark by John William Burgon

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

His own example has had a depraving influence.

From Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 by James Kennedy