2 meanings
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1 —as in:
her comments were degrading
Definition
reducing human dignity- She felt degraded by the way he delivered the criticism.
degraded = reducing human dignity
Other Uses (with this meaning)
- War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.John Stuart Mill
- We degrade God when we attribute our own ideas to Him, out of annoyance that we cannot fathom His ways.Dostoyevsky, Fyodor -- The Idiot
- No, sir—nothing shall ever induce me to degrade this honorable estate to such pitiful conditionsCooper, James Fenimore -- Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief
- Our proclivity to details cannot quite degrade our life and divest it of poetry.Emerson, Ralph Waldo -- Essays, Second Series
- Of course, if you choose some other standard than ours, then perhaps you might say he was degraded.Aldous Huxley -- Brave New World
- To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded down into such company.Mark Twain -- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- A thousand times better than Winston he knew what the world was really like, in what degradation the mass of human beings lived and by what lies and barbarities the Party kept them there.George Orwell -- 1984
- Suddenly I could stomach no more of this degradation—not of myself but of all men who were black like me.John Howard Griffin -- Black Like Me
- I would permit no man ... to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.Booker T. Washington -- Up From Slavery: An Autobiography
degraded = reduced in human dignity
degraded = reduced in human dignity
degradation = reduction of human dignity
degradation = reduction of human dignity
degrade = reduce (my) human dignity
2 —as in:
degraded the quality
Definition
to decrease the value of something- I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.Booker T. Washington
Other Uses (with this meaning)
- The factory degrades local air quality.
- And do you think you can injure and degrade yourself, and I not feel it?Bronte, Anne -- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
- Such praise coming from so degraded a source, was degrading to me, its recipient.Cicero
- Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.Frederick Douglass
- There is scarcely anything that can wound the pride or degrade the character of an independent nation which we do not experience.Alexander Hamilton -- Federalist Papers
- I wished we did not have to degrade the house with our modern jig-tunes, so out-of-place and unromantic.Daphne du Maurier -- Rebecca
- I have no position to lose, and no name to degrade.Collins, Wilkie -- No Name
degrades = to decrease the value of something
degrade = decrease the value of