traduce
Americanverb (used with object)
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traduces,
present (3rd person singular)
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traduced,
past participle, past
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traducing
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
traducesimple
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traducessimple
-
have traducedperfect
-
has traducedperfect
-
am traducingprogressive
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are traducingprogressive
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is traducingprogressive
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have been traducingperfect progressive
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has been traducingperfect progressive
Past
-
traducedsimple
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had traducedperfect
-
was traducingprogressive
-
were traducingprogressive
-
had been traducingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of traduce
1525–35; < Latin trādūcere, variant of trānsdūcere to transfer, display, expose, equivalent to trāns- trans- + dūcere to lead
Explanation
To traduce is to badmouth someone or something. If you don't want people talking trash about you, then don't traduce them either — even if they started it. Among cabaret performers, there is long tradition of traducing other performers — though at its heart, it's really a way of showing affection. Showing love by being mean: such is the strange world of camp. Of course, in order to know that a person is being funny when they traduce another person, you usually have to know them both pretty well. So if you're not either very familiar or very funny, avoid traducing other people for laughs: they're likely to think that you meant all those nasty things.
Vocabulary lists containing traduce
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Lead the Way: Duc and Duct
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Othello
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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:
Artificial-intelligence researchers rush to create it, even though computer-as-brain metaphors traduce the complexity of human biology, at least for now.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 15, 2026
“The government will in no way traduce or criticize the work of the committee who are doing exactly what Parliament has asked them to do.”
From Washington Times ● Jun. 12, 2023
And did she somehow betray or traduce them, hold them in contempt or unjustifiably exploit them?
From Washington Post ● Sep. 26, 2022
Art for art’s sake recognized that if you subordinate art to an idea like “the greater good,” you traduce it.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 25, 2022
“Mrs. Watson,” he said, “I’d like to in- traduce you to your long-lost son from Siam, His Royal Highness, Yul Watson!”
From "The Watsons Go to Birmingham" by Christopher Paul Curtis
But valuing a forest for that purpose traduces what forests are.
From New York Times ● May 16, 2017
And next to him again is the beautiful, the accomplished, the witty, the fascinating, the tormenting, Lady Clarinda, who traduces herself to the said Captain by assertions which it would drive him crazy to believe.
From Crotchet Castle by Thomas Love Peacock
Yes: they all speak well of him, and they say that the Governor, Vaudreuil, treats him shamefully, or at least traduces him shamefully behind his back to the Government in France.
From French and English A Story of the Struggle in America by Evelyn Everett-Green
One may "abuse," "assail," or vilify another to his face; he asperses, calumniates, slanders, or traduces him behind his back.
From English Synonyms and Antonyms With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions by James Champlin Fernald
He who traduces himself, sins with him who traduces another.
From Zenobia or, the Fall of Palmyra by William Ware
And yet a friend of Sir Olly Robbins, the defenestrated lead civil servant in the Foreign Office, said the soon to be former mandarin was being unfairly traduced.
From BBC ● Apr. 17, 2026
Or because Hoan Ton-That, the ingenious co-founder of Clearview, had once, like Thiel, been traduced by Gawker?
From The Guardian ● Jan. 25, 2020
And there’s another value that’s being traduced here, one that Old Schoolers often uphold: hard work.
From The New Yorker ● Apr. 28, 2017
This is, after all, a regime that traduced all diplomatic norms by seizing the U.S.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2015
The sages of the North have traduced him as a malignant.
From Guy Fawkes or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 by Thomas Lathbury
It’s an approach now so mainstream that it’s become an orthodoxy of its own; it’s difficult to think of a writer today, of any genre, who doesn’t congratulate herself for traducing artificial binaries.
From New York Times ● Jul. 7, 2020
Calling someone a “flirt” isn’t seen as an insult, but in some cases it might serve as a snide sort of traducing.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 14, 2020
Yale has been seduced by a $150 million “bells and whistles” student center into traducing the best of what it and Holloway have stood for.
From Salon ● Sep. 21, 2019
Are you comfortable with this traducing of due process?
From Washington Post ● Jan. 9, 2015
This was sufficient to set Lee at once at traducing, an art in which long experience had cultivated natural aptitude.
From Benjamin Franklin by John T. (John Torrey) Morse
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.
