Definition of Degrade

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Degrade

To reduce from a higher to a lower rank or degree; to lower in rank; to deprive of office or dignity; to strip of honors; as, to degrade a nobleman, or a general officer.

To reduce in estimation, character, or reputation; to lessen the value of; to lower the physical, moral, or intellectual character of; to debase; to bring shame or contempt upon; to disgrace; as, vice degrades a man.

To reduce in altitude or magnitude, as hills and mountains; to wear down.

To degenerate; to pass from a higher to a lower type of structure; as, a family of plants or animals degrades through this or that genus or group of genera.

Related Definitions:

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Degrade Quotations

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
Aristotle

The foundation of empire is art and science. Remove them or degrade them, and the empire is no more. Empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose.
William Blake

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.
George Orwell

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
Frederick Douglass

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
Frederick Douglass

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
Booker T. Washington

Psychoanalysis is a terribly efficient instrument, and because it is more and more a prestigious instrument, we run the risk of using it with a purpose for which it was not made for, and in this way we may degrade it.
Jacques Lacan

The Pythagoreans degrade impious men into brutes and, if one is to believe Empedocles, even into plants.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

A big ethical question is what happens after people stop using the device. Does it degrade the environment? Could it have been designed so it would actually be good for the environment?
Donald Norman

Media corporations have a civic responsibility not only to prevent fraud and financial abuse, but also to not corrupt or degrade our culture.
Charles W. Pickering

Degrade Translations

degrade in Dutch is degraderen, verlagen
degrade in German is herabsetzen
degrade in Italian is degradare
degrade in Norwegian is degradere, fornedre

Quotes