(click/touch triangles for details)
Definition
to publicly criticize- They decry poverty from their comfortable homes, but do little to combat it.
- Don't decry your own brother, my dear.Eliot, George -- Middlemarch
- It is forbidden to decry other sects; the true believer gives honour to whatever in them is worthy of honour.Asoka
- I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.Benjamin Disraeli
- A whole town may be talking of his affairs; may calumniate and decry him, but if he has no good friends, he will know nothing about it.de Balzac, Honore -- An Old Maid
- Yet, although Skelton said he would not decry any good man or any good work, his spirit was a mocking one.Marshall, H.E. -- English Literature For Boys And Girls
- But it also seems that you would decry patriotism.Henry, O. -- The Four Million
- How can we decry that which is now the very foundation of our society!Dan Brown -- Angels & Demons
- And it must be remembered that evidence is not to be discredited or decried because it is circumstantial.Theodore Dreiser -- An American Tragedy
- He could not at first believe that such a work came from America, and said it must have been fabricated by his enemies at Paris, to decry his system.Benjamin Franklin -- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- He had become just like the whites he decried.John Howard Griffin -- Black Like Me
- It should have been Esther who decried the marked-up trains—defaced, ugly, like mobile dumpsters.Don DeLillo -- Underworld
- In letters to the editor he was decried as a "pharisee of liberty," an "imposter."David McCullough -- John Adams
- When it was written, the Empire decried it as blasphemy and burned the author, Heslant the Monk.Christopher Paolini -- Eragon
- Again, we may decry the color-prejudice of the South, yet it remains a heavy fact.W. E. B. Du Bois -- The Souls of Black Folk
- Felicity pushes in, annoying a matron, who decries her rudeness with an "I say!"Libba Bray -- Sweet Far Thing
- I could not bear to hear my old nurse so decried, and made the subject of such a wish.Charles Dickens -- David Copperfield
- The attack was decried as an outrage, "proof of the diabolical designs" of the administration in London, as Washington said.David G. McCullough -- 1776
- "Oh, no need to decry your industry!" said the stranger, very easy, showing his teeth in a smile.Stephen Vincent Benét -- The Devil and Daniel Webster
- Even General Smuts realized the dangers of this harsh ideology, decrying apartheid as "a crazy concept, born of prejudice and fear."Nelson Mandela -- Long Walk to Freedom