deprave
Americanverb (used with object)
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to make morally bad or evil; vitiate; corrupt.
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Obsolete. to defame.
verb
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to make morally bad; corrupt; vitiate
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obsolete to defame; slander
Other Word Forms
- depravation noun
- depraver noun
- depravingly adverb
- nondepravation noun
Etymology
Origin of deprave
1325–75; Middle English depraven (< Anglo-French ) < Latin dēprāvāre to pervert, corrupt, equivalent to dē- de- + prāv ( us ) crooked + -āre infinitive suffix
Explanation
Use the verb deprave as a more dramatic synonym for corrupt: Some parents in the 1980s feared that heavy metal music would deprave their innocent children. You have probably heard the expression "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach," meaning the sense of taste, when triggered, can inflame feelings like love and passion. Taken to extremes, though, too much indulging of any of the senses can make someone depraved, addicted to or fixated on feeling good. This pursuit of excess is the opposite of a word that sounds and looks like depraved: deprived.
Vocabulary lists containing deprave
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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"Paradise Lost" by John Milton, Book V
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Paradise Lost
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"I don't think you should censor books but there is this strange anomaly - it's common sense that films can deprave and corrupt, and that books can't."
From BBC • Aug. 31, 2012
It has been 14 years since China officially banned console video games, worrying the living-room boxes would dumb down or deprave the brains of Chinese youth.
From Washington Post
The legal definition of obscenity in Great Britain is that which tends "to deprave and corrupt."
From Time Magazine Archive
On the contrary it would so deprave our currency that it would bring ruin, particularly to the wage earners of the country and those on fixed salaries.
From Time Magazine Archive
Success and unquestioned dominion far more often deprave and distort than ennoble and purify the moral nature of man.
From Theodoric the Goth Barbarian Champion of Civilisation by Hodgkin, Thomas
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
