bastardize
Americanverb (used with object)
-
to lower in condition or worth; debase.
hybrid works that neither preserve nor bastardize existing art forms.
-
to declare or prove (someone) to be a bastard.
-
Australian. to harass or humiliate as part of initiation into a college or regiment.
verb (used without object)
verb
-
to debase; corrupt
-
archaic to declare illegitimate
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of bastardize
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.
See Examples For:
Megan objected to the anecdote on social media, accusing Harris of trying to "reinvent history" and "bastardize his memory."
From Salon ● Oct. 12, 2024
“I feel like many people don’t realize that they bastardize ASL, and it harms more than it helps,” Bienvenu told Amanda.
From New York Times ● Jul. 27, 2022
“If we bastardize Congress, we’re also bastardizing our country,” Cayetano said in his video message.
From Washington Times ● Oct. 13, 2020
“You can bastardize everything else in your life,” he says, “but if you compromise with your art, why be an artist?”
From Washington Post ● Jun. 9, 2016
And were we to suppose his estate in his power to bequeath as he pleases; why should a man resolve, for the gratifying of his foolish humour only, to bastardize his race?
From Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 4 by Richardson, Samuel
I was just picturing them both hating how I bastardized their song.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2026
When I started writing, I was captivated by these myths and how they had become distorted and bastardized.
From Salon ● Apr. 12, 2023
“They’ve bastardized the concept of what NFTs were supposed to be,” said Aja Trier, an artist in Texas whose work has been copied and sold on OpenSea.
From New York Times ● Jun. 6, 2022
That was always going to be a bastardized version of a baseball season, without fans in the seats and with manufactured crowd noise piped pumped into the stadium and broadcast feeds.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 6, 2022
Instead of Steinbeck and Shakespeare, her students read “watered-down news articles or biographies, bastardized novels, memos or brochures.”
From "Drama High" by Michael Sokolove
Duck à l’orange has a reputation as an archaic 1970s atrocity owing to American cooks bastardizing what should be a glistening garnish into a sickly-sweet goop.
From Salon ● Nov. 1, 2025
Patti Serrelli, the owner of the longtime Italian-beef purveyor Serrelli’s Finer Foods, had a harsher take on these adaptations: “They are kind of bastardizing the original recipe.”
From New York Times ● Dec. 27, 2021
The album honors the Black American folk tradition without bastardizing or commodifying it.
From Slate ● Dec. 7, 2021
“If we bastardize Congress, we’re also bastardizing our country,” Cayetano said in his video message.
From Washington Times ● Oct. 13, 2020
The murder therefore was to be fixed on Richard the Third, who was to be supposed to have usurped the throne, by murdering, and not, as was really the case, by bastardizing his nephews.
From Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third by Walpole, Horace
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.
