debase

Japan is not choosing to debase the yen.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 28, 2026

These stories tell us that Diogenes was chased out of his native Sinope, on the north coast of what’s now Turkey, for his supposed role in a scheme to debase the city’s currency.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 17, 2025

“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Trump said, then he proceeded to debase a journalist who wasn’t there to report on the event because he’d been silenced, forever.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 20, 2025

The word has the pretense of a neutral reference, but is increasingly used to debase and belittle the underlying meaning of anti-racism and anti-bigotry.

From Salon ● May 5, 2021

Just because the world was unjust didn’t mean that I must debase myself as well.

From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros

It debases all of us when it is reduced to a few letters and numbers — and, worse, perpetuates injustice when used on a systemic level.

From Salon ● Mar. 15, 2021

And that vision, that fight, in the midst of everything that degrades and debases you, you pull upon community, you pull upon cultural power, you pull upon your spirituality, and you pull upon hope.

From Slate ● Oct. 6, 2020

Art museum membership is usually pitched as a way to get admission discounts, which debases the museum enterprise as a mere commercial transaction.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2019

Rather than explore complex issues and troubling experiences by way of sci-fi future-historical fantasy, “Alita: Battle Angel” debases them—and its exemplary character—under the force of a blinkered and reactionary model of drama and business alike.

From The New Yorker ● Feb. 13, 2019

It is so simple a fact and one that is so hard, apparently, to grasp: Whoever debases others is debasing himself.

From "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin

Whereas the European gothic, he concludes, was “an enlightened attack on a debased ruling class or entrenched superstition,” its American version emerged as “a Calvinist exposé of natural human corruption.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026

The very concepts of intellectualism, and of objective knowledge itself, have been debased by a kind of Gresham’s Law, with the bad driving out the good.

From Salon ● Apr. 19, 2026

Yet she knows the history that reduced her to such a debased state.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 15, 2025

There will be a new ball this season, the Nike Flight, which is "built with Aerowsculpt technology with grooves debased into the casing, to allow air to travel seamlessly around the ball, delivering truer flight".

From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2024

Fearing the worst, the debased tlatoani made a begging public appearance on behalf of the Spanish.

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann

Robbie’s most deliciously debasing scene is when she throws coins on the ground for a desperate beggar — and then that person forces her to watch as he picks them up.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 11, 2026

The late Roman Empire undermined its commercial economy through centralization, regulation and debasing the currency.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 29, 2025

Dismissing the case, Mr Justice Chamberlain said Yaxley-Lennon's own barrister had accepted there was no evidence his client had been segregated "for the purpose of breaking his resistance or humiliating or debasing him".

From BBC ● Mar. 21, 2025

How debasing it feels to beg for that macaroni noodle.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 1, 2022

For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and miserable fears to contemplate the divine ideas of liberty and self-sacrifice of which these sights were the monuments and the remembrancers.

From "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley