debauch

“There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency,” John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1919 in “The Economic Consequences of the Peace.”

From New York Times ● Dec. 10, 2021

“I did really debauch myself to achieve a visual at the time” is how he remembers it.

From The New Yorker ● Sep. 15, 2016

We’ve not had a debasement of the currency, a debauch of the exchange rate, so those fears and warnings aren’t all that well founded.

From Forbes ● Feb. 13, 2015

Lastly, the Gabfest crew takes a look at Google’s new smartphone for your face, Google Glass: Will it extend our human powers or finally debauch them for good?

From Slate ● May 22, 2013

All the blood and lymph had been drained out of him by an enormous debauch of work, leaving only a frail structure of nerves, bones, and skin.

From "1984" by George Orwell

Thus the devil thrives in proportion, is always ready to enrich the rich man with ruin, the wise man with folly, the beautiful woman with degradation, the kind, average man with debauches of savagery.

From Time Magazine Archive

Good ideas are kept out of circulation because they are concealed by highbrow language, whereas lowbrow journalism debauches American speech.

From Time Magazine Archive

Other practically sure signs of neurosis: fear of not being able to draw a deep breath, burning in the abdomen, repeated belching, stomachaches after "emotional debauches," "distresses that come before breakfast."

From Time Magazine Archive

Huston filmed Sodom dimly lit, and shied clear of the debauches of DeMille's epics.

From Time Magazine Archive

The account given by Sismondi of the debauches of this persecutor of the Huguenots is very full.

From The Huguenots in France by Samuel Smiles

The cinematic language suggests that Burning Man may be debauched, pointless and a massive indulgence, but that it also champions decadence in pursuit of freedom.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026

"If anyone has lived the debauched rock 'n' roll lifestyle," he once admitted, "I suppose it's me."

From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2025

From their earliest shared Lunchables through debauched bachelorette parties right up to the Golden Girls years, women bond with intensity.

From Salon ● Jun. 6, 2025

Lee currently lives a life that appears antithetical to her debauched teen years.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 29, 2023

Horrible, debauched, mouth limp and cracked, loose against the teeth as an ancient dog’s.

From "Grendel" by John Gardner

Germany, haunted by the experience of hyperinflation in 1923 and after World War Two, is deeply fearful of debauching the central bank by printing money to lend to governments.

From Reuters ● Nov. 28, 2011

His novel is a grotesque, exciting and impudent tale of student ribaldry, army debauching and mystic romance.

From Time Magazine Archive

The graver peril is that the precious-metals fever will sap more and more confidence in paper money, debauching its value.

From Time Magazine Archive

For, neither his dangerous intrigues in debauching the soldiery, nor his abandoning the province to the most profligate and rapacious, nor even his insults to Germanicus, were to be denied.

From The Reign of Tiberius, Out of the First Six Annals of Tacitus; With His Account of Germany, and Life of Agricola by Thomas Gordon

When one considers the characteristics of our surface life for recent decades—the devotion to money-getting, the rapid increase of senseless and debauching luxury, the reckless frivolity, the unthinking haste and selfish pleasure-seeking—one questions.

From The Soul of Democracy The Philosophy of the World War in Relation to Human Liberty by Edward Howard Griggs