deprave

American  

[dih-prayv] / dɪˈpreɪv /

verb (used with object)

• depraves,
  present (3rd person singular)
• depraved,
  past participle,  past
• depraving
  present participle

1. to make morally bad or evil; vitiate; corrupt.

2. Obsolete. to defame.

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deprave British  

/ dɪˈpreɪv /

verb

1. to make morally bad; corrupt; vitiate

2. obsolete to defame; slander

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• depravation
  noun
• depraver
  noun
• nondepravation
  noun
• depravingly
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Participles

• depraving
  present
• depraved
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• deprave
  simple
• depraves
  simple
• have depraved
  perfect
• has depraved
  perfect
• am depraving
  progressive
• are depraving
  progressive
• is depraving
  progressive
• have been depraving
  perfect progressive
• has been depraving
  perfect progressive

Past

• depraved
  simple
• had depraved
  perfect
• was depraving
  progressive
• were depraving
  progressive
• had been depraving
  perfect progressive

Future

• will deprave
  simple
• will have depraved
  perfect
• will be depraving
  progressive
• will have been depraving
  perfect progressive

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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

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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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

deprave depraves depraved depraving

"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 Albert Pike

Cornelia," replied Antonicq, proud of the noble words of his bride, "tyrants rule less, perhaps, through force that terrorizes than through corruption that depraves.

From The Pocket Bible or Christian the Printer A Tale of the Sixteenth Century by Eug?ne Sue

To this it is to be added "that the possession of power depraves men."

From Anarchism by Paul Eltzbacher

Such teaching is interesting as showing how the admission of caprice in the world of phenomena reacts upon the moral sense and depraves our conception of God and salvation.

From Christian Mysticism by William Ralph Inge

You make the public statement that calls for his trade, that debauches and depraves him, till he feels no shame in it; and in what are you better than he?

From Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

For, as Aristotle says rightly, the moving of laughter is a fault in comedy, a kind of turpitude that depraves some part of a man's nature without a disease.

From The Function of the Poet and Other Essays by James Russell Lowell

“The Shards” is more problematic: Mr. Ellis has been recycling his depraved teen angels long enough that the show, a collaboration with Ryan Murphy, becomes parody, even comedy.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026

Neill seemed to savor the chance to go deeper, to look more closely at our innate capacity for acts both moral and depraved.

From Salon ● Jul. 17, 2026

Yet its parties, even at their most decadent and depraved, were never quite cool.

From Slate ● Mar. 30, 2026

Intimately acquainted with Richard’s malignity, these ruined royals know only too well the toll of his depraved machinations.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 26, 2026

Shrieks and depraved music throbbed, muffled, through the closed windows.

From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt

In the resulting degradation the woman has the largest share, since it makes her a pariah and involves her in all the hardening and depraving influences of social ostracism.

From Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 Sex in Relation to Society by Havelock Ellis

If the American practice were half as depraving as it ought logically to be in their conditions, their social system would drop to pieces.

From Through the Eye of the Needle A Romance by William Dean Howells

There may be slaveries so soft as to invite the base and pusillanimous, but they are more rather than less depraving than cruelties to all that makes honorable and useful manhood.

From The Subterranean Brotherhood by Julian Hawthorne

If affection lead a man to favor the less worthy in desert, let him do it, without depraving or disabling the better deserver.

From The Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon

Second, treason was made to consist in such vague and infinitely elastic kinds of action as inspiring discouragement, misleading opinion, depraving manners, corrupting patriots, abusing the principles of the Revolution by perfidious applications.

From Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) Essay 1: Robespierre by John Morley

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