DEBASE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does debase mean? 

• DEBASE (verb)
  The verb DEBASE has 3 senses:

1. corrupt morally or by intemperance or sensuality

2. lower in value by increasing the base-metal content

3. corrupt, debase, or make impure by adding a foreign or inferior substance; often by replacing valuable ingredients with inferior ones

  Familiarity information: DEBASE used as a verb is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DEBASE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they debase    ... he / she / it debases   
Past simple: debased   
Past participle: debased   
-ing form: debasing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Corrupt morally or by intemperance or sensuality

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Synonyms:

corrupt; debase; debauch; demoralise; demoralize; deprave; misdirect; pervert; profane; subvert; vitiate

Context example:

corrupt the morals

Hypernyms (to "debase" is one way to...):

alter; change; modify (cause to change; make different; cause a transformation)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "debase"):

carnalise; carnalize; sensualise; sensualize (debase through carnal gratification)

infect (corrupt with ideas or an ideology)

lead astray; lead off (teach immoral behavior to)

poison (spoil as if by poison)

bastardise; bastardize (change something so that its value declines; for example, art forms)

suborn (incite to commit a crime or an evil deed)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody
Something ----s somebody

Derivation:

debasement (changing to a lower state (a less respected state))

Sense 2

Meaning:

Lower in value by increasing the base-metal content

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

alloy; debase

Hypernyms (to "debase" is one way to...):

devalue (lower the value or quality of)

Domain category:

metallurgy (the science and technology of metals)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Derivation:

debaser (a person who lowers the quality or character or value (as by adding cheaper metal to coins))

Sense 3

Meaning:

Corrupt, debase, or make impure by adding a foreign or inferior substance; often by replacing valuable ingredients with inferior ones

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

adulterate; debase; dilute; load; stretch

Context example:

adulterate liquor

Hypernyms (to "debase" is one way to...):

corrupt; spoil (alter from the original)

Verb group:

extend; stretch (increase in quantity or bulk by adding a cheaper substance)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "debase"):

water down (thin by adding water to)

doctor; doctor up; sophisticate (alter and make impure, as with the intention to deceive)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Derivation:

debasement (being mixed with extraneous material; the product of adulterating)

 Context examples 

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.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

And you must be reminded here once for all that that former calling of his was by no means at that time in the debased condition to which it afterwards fell.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The victim, from my cradle, of pecuniary liabilities to which I have been unable to respond, I have ever been the sport and toy of debasing circumstances.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Instead of working wickedness by night and growing more debased in the assimilating of it by day, she shall take her place with the other Angels.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to children: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable poverty; they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices: poverty for me was synonymous with degradation.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He had gone away rejected and mortified—disappointed in a very sanguine hope, after a series of what appeared to him strong encouragement; and not only losing the right lady, but finding himself debased to the level of a very wrong one.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

I durst make no return to this malicious insinuation, which debased human understanding below the sagacity of a common hound, who has judgment enough to distinguish and follow the cry of the ablest dog in the pack, without being ever mistaken.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)