- decry
- decry, depreciate, disparage, derogate, detract, belittle, minimize mean to write, speak, or otherwise indicate one's feeling in regard to something in such a way as to reveal one's low opinion of it.Decry implies open or public condemnation or censure with the intent to discredit or run down someone or something{
there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labor of the novelist— Austen
}{you've had a Western education . . . but you're decrying everything Western science has contributed to the world— Heiser
}Depreciate implies a representation of a person or thing as of smaller worth than that usually ascribed to it{to prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself— Burke
}{he seems to me to depreciate Shakespeare for the wrong reasons— T. S. Eliot
}{shocked to learn that professional art critics today depreciate his works— Mary McCarthy
}Disparage implies depreciation by more subtle or indirect methods (as slighting, invidious reference, or faint praise){the critic ... is generally disparaged as an artist who has failed— L. P. Smith
}{cities . . . which they sometimes pretended to disparage, but of which they were secretly and inordinately proud— Repplier
}Derogate and detract (both with from) stress the idea of taking away, positively and injuriously, especially from reputation or merit; derogate from may be used with an impersonal subject only, detract from with either a personal or an impersonal subject{a few instances of inaccuracy or mediocrity can never derogate from the superlative merit of Homer and Vergil— Goldsmith
}{far am I from detracting from the merit of some gentlemen ... on that occasion— Burke
}{the advocates of pure poetry are apt to take the line that any admixture of logical, of "prose" meaning detracts from the value of a poem— Day Lewis
}Belittle and minimize both imply depreciation, but belittle suggests an effort to make a thing contemptibly small, and minimize to reduce it to a minimum or to make it seem either disparagingly or defensively as small as possible{he was inclined to belittle the assistance he had received from others
}{he minimized the dangers of the task
}{let there be no belittling of such qualities as Archer's—his coherent thinking, his sense of the worth of order and workmanship— Montague
}{al- ways delighted at a pretext for belittling a distinguished contemporary— Edmund Wilson
}{"Don't think that I am trying to minimize your excellent work among the hop pickers this year," he told his curate— Mackenzie
}Analogous words: *disapprove, deprecate: *criticize, denounce, reprehend, censure, reprobate, condemnAntonyms: extol
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
