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
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
It can never be employed, in any country under Heaven, to teach a toleration for cruelty, to weaken moral hatred for guilt, or to deprave and brutalize the human mind.
From Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry by Pike, Albert
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.
