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demean
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  • I, on the other hand, held the opinion that to draw such a parallel tended to demean the 'dignity' of the likes of Mr Marshall.†   (source)
  • How could he demean himself so?†   (source)
  • One was an unerring eye that promptly spotted the woman, even in a crowd, who was waiting for him, though even then he courted her with caution, for he felt that nothing was more embarrassing or more demeaning than a refusal.†   (source)
  • To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha…which is to demean oneself.†   (source)
  • If the situation hadn't been so serious, I might have wished I'd invented something a lot more cruel and demeaning.†   (source)
  • He watches his tormentors shove him, strike him, push him, demean him.†   (source)
  • This, of course, was a vicious and demeaning insult, particularly coming from Zaree, who as Moody's elder and longtime family friend, deserved great respect.†   (source)
  • As a rule, we objected to having our pictures taken in prison on the grounds that it is generally demeaning to be seen as a prisoner.†   (source)
  • It was humiliating and demeaning to have to try and pee into a Thermos bottle, sure it was, but it didn't matter because the mailman was coming — even now he would be loading his small blue-and-white truck at the ivy-covered brick post office on Carbine Street … or maybe he had already begun his route, working his way out Route 117 toward the Maple Sugar Road.†   (source)
  • She must hate me for subjecting her to something so demeaning.†   (source)
  • When he missed the ball with an ungainly swing of the leg, they were there to cover for him, but always subtly, and never in a way that demeaned him or his effort.†   (source)
  • Somehow the word sounded demeaning.†   (source)
  • The right, joined by some feminists, refers to "prostitutes" or "prostituted women" and argues that prostitution is inherently demeaning and offensive.†   (source)
  • Riddle did not believe that Seabiscuit was in War Admiral's league and may have felt that by agreeing to run against a western horse in a match race, he would be demeaning his colt.†   (source)
  • He has no clue how demeaning and condescending he is.†   (source)
  • To demean him personally would be to demean all other officers of equal or lesser rank.†   (source)
  • I'm not going to demean myself by asking what he thought of the article itself.†   (source)
  • For all his fearful reputation, he demeaned himself with this display of pride.†   (source)
  • To him, as violent and demeaning as jail sometimes is, it is better than drifting from shelter to shelter or living in cardboard boxes.†   (source)
  • To be uprooted at all was demeaning enough.†   (source)
  • It was odd how men like Suggs used that word to demean women when it was the only part of a woman they valued.†   (source)
  • To have to beg or borrow salt was utterly demeaning.†   (source)
  • Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor.†   (source)
  • "So you don't feel it's sort of demeaning to be propped up by a man?" she says.†   (source)
  • This was history's gift to him, he was grateful for it, and he refused to demean it by imagining a war that did not exist.†   (source)
  • Demeaning?†   (source)
  • It was demeaning to admit it, but he was a man who did what had to be done.†   (source)
  • There was no one he wouldn't kill, no method too brutal or demeaning for him… No, there wasn't a pattern, just money.†   (source)
  • If a war is without justice, the soldier knows that the sacrifice of life, his own valued life, is demeaned, and therefore his self-respect must likewise be demeaned.†   (source)
  • He cannot understand how the white man can show the most demeaning aspects of his nature and at the same time delude himself into thinking he is inherently superior.†   (source)
  • Nathan had seemed so certain and knowledgeable about other matters that in this case, too, his augury might be correct, and in a sudden weird vision—all the more demeaning because of its blatant competitiveness—I saw myself running a pale tenth in a literary track race, coughing on the dust of a pounding fast-footed horde of Bellows and Schwartzes and Levys and Mandelbaums.†   (source)
  • The dolphin is a joyous fellow, his heart uncluttered with the pity that demeans.†   (source)
  • Swear like a ruffian and demean himself   (source)
  • but this gentleman is no spy, and why should he so demean himself as to make himself one?   (source)
  • Ironically, her logical, if demeaning, reply is the only one that comforts me.†   (source)
  • Tyrion would not demean himself by begging.†   (source)
  • He is suspicious of my doings with women, although he will not demean himself by saying so.†   (source)
  • Since it would be demeaning to be discovered, I exposed myself.†   (source)
  • Why do you, who might be the freest spirit of us all, demean yourself by serving your inferiors?†   (source)
  • The very notion that I'm devoting any thought to who I want presented as my lover, given our current circumstances, is demeaning.†   (source)
  • He thought I ought not to have demeaned myself by petitioning such low specimens of humanity as the police and the labour bureau staff.†   (source)
  • Although there may be some truth in both hypotheses, this sort of posthumous off-the-rack psychoanalysis is a dubious, highly speculative enterprise that inevitably demeans and trivializes the absent analysand.†   (source)
  • Grandmother was by no means feebleminded; on the contrary, she was an intelligent, overbearing individual, who seemed at times to relish demeaning her daughter.†   (source)
  • As an adult, I believed Mother used those labels not just to demean me, but to somehow justify her treatment, to protect her psyche from some type of traumatic meltdown, from the fact that she was a mother who was brutalizing her own son.†   (source)
  • In any case, that figure doesn't begin to capture the scope of the problem, because it doesn't include what might be called honor rapes--those rapes intended to disgrace the victim or demean her clan.†   (source)
  • I advocated that we should remain seated, as it was demeaning to have to recognize the enemy when he did not recognize us as political prisoners.†   (source)
  • The term is inexact and demeaning, for a pacifist has no peace in his soul, and he knows rage as much as anyone else, but he simply will not kill.†   (source)
  • Alessandro knew from long experience as a subordinate that he was supposed to smile in a cowardly fashion and attempt to say something demeaning about himself.†   (source)
  • It was corrupt and demeaning, another way of repressing prisoners in general and political prisoners in particular.†   (source)
  • It would demean the Professor needlessly, would place too much emphasis on the sycophancy he had occasionally displayed in the face of manifestations of German might and potency, to portray him as buffoonishly servile in Duffield's presence; he possesses, after all, his own illustrious repute as a scholar and an expert in his field.†   (source)
  • The libidinal sap which courses so frantically in your Polish veins would allow you no ease, and so today once again you choose to fall into the ridiculous embrace—ridiculous, that is, if it weren't really so vile and demeaning—of Doctor Seymour Katz."†   (source)
  • If the Colonel says I must, I—I'll [almost sobbing] I'll demean myself.†   (source)
  • I could no longer plead extenuating circumstances: I could not demean myself by trying to explain—†   (source)
  • Thank you for assuming that I would not demean myself with lies.†   (source)
  • It was not usual for Judith so far to demean herself as to appeal to Hetty's judgment.†   (source)
  • "This woman's kin wouldn't like her to demean herself to a common carpenter."†   (source)
  • A narrow life in Budmouth might have completely demeaned her.†   (source)
  • "You won't deign to demean yourself by marrying me, you…." said Helene, beginning to cry.†   (source)
  • He cried, "Leave this room at once, and I deeply regret that I demeaned myself to meet you at the station.†   (source)
  • More angry with Jude for demeaning her by coming there than for dereliction of duty, she rated him primarily from that point of view, and only secondarily from a moral one.†   (source)
  • I know there's one thing vulgar about money, and that's the thinking about it; and my wife would never have to demean herself in that way."†   (source)
  • It comes from an era of superstitious contrition, when the idea of humanity was demeaned and distorted into a caricature, a fearful era, when harmony and health were considered suspicious and devilish, whereas infirmity in those days was as good as a passport to heaven.†   (source)
  • Even the Griffiths, poor as they were, would have felt themselves demeaned by the thought of having to dwell in such a street.†   (source)
  • Her face wore a puzzled, troubled, nervous look, in which was mingled fear, sorrow, depression, distrust, a trace of resentment and a trace of despair, all of which, coloring and animating her eyes, which were now fixed on him in round orblike solemnity, caused him to suffer from a sense of having misused and demeaned her not a little.†   (source)
  • And yet his drunkenness did not belittle or demean him, caused him no disgrace, but rather, when joined with the majesty of his nature, it only made him grander and more awe-inspiring.†   (source)
  • We can speak of it with all due reverence, because everything about him has stature, the magnificent stature of a king, and we demean neither him nor ourselves when we speak about it humanely.†   (source)
  • One would not be a woman if one were unwilling to risk being demeaned for the sake of a man, a man of stature, as you put it, who regards one as the object of his feelings and his fears about feelings.†   (source)
  • Because, then, even being demeaned brings with it a certain stature, and a woman can look down from the heights of her demeaned position to those who have no royal stature, and speak in that disparaging tone you used just now when you asked about timbres-poste and said: 'Gentlemen should at least be punctual and dependable.'†   (source)
  • 'This is the hend, is it,' said Miss Squeers, tossing her head, and looking contemptuously at the floor, 'of my taking notice of that rubbishing creature, and demeaning myself to patronise her?'†   (source)
  • Susan and an attendant girl, whose inferior appearance informed Fanny, to her great surprise, that she had previously seen the upper servant, brought in everything necessary for the meal; Susan looking, as she put the kettle on the fire and glanced at her sister, as if divided between the agreeable triumph of shewing her activity and usefulness, and the dread of being thought to demean herself by such an office.†   (source)
  • He then commits that gross outrage upon our feelings, which he never could or would have committed but for the delight he took in exposing us; and then we are to be demeaned for the service of his friends!†   (source)
  • …the subject, for having received ordination at Easter, I have been so fortunate as to be distinguished by the patronage of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, whose bounty and beneficence has preferred me to the valuable rectory of this parish, where it shall be my earnest endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her ladyship, and be ever ready to perform those rites and ceremonies which are instituted by the Church of England.†   (source)
  • I call it demeaning a man's business to trade with such people; and from this time forth, if they want a sausage or an ounce of liver, they shall run after the cart for it!"†   (source)
  • It was, of course, Mrs. Sedley's opinion that her son would demean himself by a marriage with an artist's daughter.†   (source)
  • During this performance, the hermit demeaned himself much like a first-rate critic of the present day at a new opera.†   (source)
  • Pfuel only snorted contemptuously and turned away, to show that he would never demean himself by replying to such nonsense as he was now hearing.†   (source)
  • "And if you'd please not to say as I've been to speak to you, for my son 'ud be very angry with me for demeaning myself, I know he would, and I've trouble enough without being scolded by my children."†   (source)
  • I admit that I am a spy, and that it is considered a discreditable station—though it must be filled by somebody; but this gentleman is no spy, and why should he so demean himself as to make himself one?†   (source)
  • With this ecstasy, Which brings me near and nearer to the Gods, Thou gav'st the comrade, whom I now no more Can do without, though, cold and scornful, he Demeans me to myself, and with a breath, A word, transforms thy gifts to nothingness.†   (source)
  • I argued that if I had been rude, apologies was due, and those apologies without a question of demeaning, I did make.†   (source)
  • As for Mrs. Crawley's character, I shan't demean myself or that most spotless and perfectly irreproachable lady by even hinting that it requires a defence.†   (source)
  • He hesitated whether to address the King as the Black Knight-errant, or in what other manner to demean himself towards him.†   (source)
  • MARGARET I feel, the gentleman allows for me, Demeans himself, and shames me by it; A traveller is so used to be Kindly content with any diet.†   (source)
  • "That's a moral impossible," returned the hunter, good humouredly, "onless one of you should so far demean herself as to marry me."†   (source)
  • Osborne withdrew his account from Bullock and Hulker's, went on 'Change with a horsewhip which he swore he would lay across the back of a certain scoundrel that should be nameless, and demeaned himself in his usual violent manner.†   (source)
  • Balashev began to feel uncomfortable: as envoy he feared to demean his dignity and felt the necessity of replying; but, as a man, he shrank before the transport of groundless wrath that had evidently seized Napoleon.†   (source)
  • One who has reached my years, and who has a name for wisdom, ought not to demean himself.†   (source)
  • How Sir Tristram changed his harness and it was all red, and how he demeaned him, and how Sir Palomides slew Launcelot's horse.†   (source)
  • Though a brother, he considered himself as my master, and me as his apprentice, and accordingly, expected the same services from me as he would from another, while I thought he demean'd me too much in some he requir'd of me, who from a brother expected more indulgence.†   (source)
  • And if those among you who are said to be superior in wisdom and courage, and any other virtue, demean themselves in this way, how shameful is their conduct!†   (source)
  • It had just never seemed worth it to demean myself in that way for laughs.†   (source)
  • [26] Gould also protested against /to jeopardize/, /leniency/ and /to demean/, and Richard Grant White joined him in an onslaught upon /to donate/.†   (source)
  • /To demean/ is still questioned, but English authors of the first rank have used it, and it will probably lose its dubious character very soon.†   (source)
  • The two Fowlers, in "The King's English," separate Americanisms from other current vulgarisms, but many of the latter on their list are actually American in origin, though they do not seem to know it—for example, /to demean/ and /to transpire/.†   (source)
  • She never reprehended him but mildly, When he demean'd himself rough, rude, and wildly.†   (source)
  • Here Don Quixote joined them; and learning what passed, and how soon Sancho was to go to his government, he with the duke's permission took him by the hand, and retired to his room with him for the purpose of giving him advice as to how he was to demean himself in his office.†   (source)
  • How Sir Tristram changed his harness and it was all red, and how he demeaned him, and how Sir Palomides slew Launcelot's horse.†   (source)
  • To be sure, one can't help pitying the poor young man, and yet he doth not deserve much pity neither, for demeaning himself with such kind of trumpery.†   (source)
  • Now, out of doubt, Antipholus is mad, Else would he never so demean himself: A ring he hath of mine worth forty ducats, And for the same he promis'd me a chain; Both one and other he denies me now: The reason that I gather he is mad,— Besides this present instance of his rage,— Is a mad tale he told to-day at dinner, Of his own doors being shut against his entrance.†   (source)
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