6 uses
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Definition
to degrade (decrease) the purity, quality, or status of something — often morality or metals
- Illness is, rather, a debasement—indeed, a painful debasement of humanity, injurious to the very concept itself.4.1 - A Necessary Purchase (70% in)
- And now just imagine, my good engineer, and you my fine lieutenant, what I, the son of such a father, must suffer in this damnable and barbaric place, where my body shivers with cold at the height of summer, even as my soul is constantly tortured by debasing sights.4.1 - A Necessary Purchase (37% in)
- Illness is, rather, a debasement—indeed, a painful debasement of humanity, injurious to the very concept itself.4.1 - A Necessary Purchase (70% in)
- A human being who lives as an invalid is only a body, and that is the most inhuman of debasements—in most cases, he is no better than a cadaver.4.1 - A Necessary Purchase (80% in)
- "You will," Settembrini insisted, "level that charge quite in vain, simply because in due time, noble humanistic pride comes to see the tie that binds the mind to the physical body, to nature, as a debasement and a curse.5.5 - Encyclopedia (90% in)
- You know yourself, of course, that the only intellectual protest against nature that can be called honorable is one that keeps in mind the dignity and beauty of man and never one that, even if it does not aim at man's degradation and debasement, nevertheless accomplishes just that.6.3 - The City of God and Evil Deliverance (36% in)
There are no more uses of "debase" in The Magic Mountain.
Typical Usage
(best examples)