debase
Americanverb (used with object)
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debases,
present (3rd person singular)
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debased,
past participle, past
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debasing
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
debasesimple
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debasessimple
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have debasedperfect
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has debasedperfect
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am debasingprogressive
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are debasingprogressive
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is debasingprogressive
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have been debasingperfect progressive
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has been debasingperfect progressive
Past
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debasedsimple
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had debasedperfect
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was debasingprogressive
-
were debasingprogressive
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had been debasingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of debase
Explanation
To debase something is to make it corrupt or impure. If your lemonade stand sells “pure lemonade,” you’d insist on using real lemons instead of a mix; using a mix would debase your product. Debase is often used in the context of two things: coins and people. To debase a coin is to replace some of the precious metal in the coin with metal of lesser value. To debase a person is to corrupt them, often by driving them to perform an immoral act like (gasp!) using the lemonade mix. Just promise us you won’t do it.
Vocabulary lists containing debase
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"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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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.
See Examples For:
Japan is not choosing to debase the yen.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 28, 2026
These stories tell us that Diogenes was chased out of his native Sinope, on the north coast of what’s now Turkey, for his supposed role in a scheme to debase the city’s currency.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 17, 2025
“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Trump said, then he proceeded to debase a journalist who wasn’t there to report on the event because he’d been silenced, forever.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 20, 2025
The word has the pretense of a neutral reference, but is increasingly used to debase and belittle the underlying meaning of anti-racism and anti-bigotry.
From Salon ● May 5, 2021
He replied to Pavlov that he could not debase his own standards of sportsmanship and would see the match through despite Fischer’s outrageous conduct.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
"Has Mr Putin ever used one crude word to address you? This has never happened. Therefore, I think that such vocabulary debases America itself," he added.
From BBC ● Feb. 22, 2024
It debases all of us when it is reduced to a few letters and numbers — and, worse, perpetuates injustice when used on a systemic level.
From Salon ● Mar. 15, 2021
And that vision, that fight, in the midst of everything that degrades and debases you, you pull upon community, you pull upon cultural power, you pull upon your spirituality, and you pull upon hope.
From Slate ● Oct. 6, 2020
Art museum membership is usually pitched as a way to get admission discounts, which debases the museum enterprise as a mere commercial transaction.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2019
It is so simple a fact and one that is so hard, apparently, to grasp: Whoever debases others is debasing himself.
From "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin
Whereas the European gothic, he concludes, was “an enlightened attack on a debased ruling class or entrenched superstition,” its American version emerged as “a Calvinist exposé of natural human corruption.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
The very concepts of intellectualism, and of objective knowledge itself, have been debased by a kind of Gresham’s Law, with the bad driving out the good.
From Salon ● Apr. 19, 2026
Yet she knows the history that reduced her to such a debased state.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 15, 2025
There will be a new ball this season, the Nike Flight, which is "built with Aerowsculpt technology with grooves debased into the casing, to allow air to travel seamlessly around the ball, delivering truer flight".
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2024
I’ve been debased through my association with you.
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
Robbie’s most deliciously debasing scene is when she throws coins on the ground for a desperate beggar — and then that person forces her to watch as he picks them up.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 11, 2026
Institutions, acting in their own interest, are debasing America’s pool of young, human capital.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 30, 2025
Dismissing the case, Mr Justice Chamberlain said Yaxley-Lennon's own barrister had accepted there was no evidence his client had been segregated "for the purpose of breaking his resistance or humiliating or debasing him".
From BBC ● Mar. 21, 2025
How debasing it feels to beg for that macaroni noodle.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 1, 2022
It is so simple a fact and one that is so hard, apparently, to grasp: Whoever debases others is debasing himself.
From "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin
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.
