- degrade
- degrade 1 Degrade, demote, reduce, declass, disrate mean to lower in station, rank, or grade.Degrade may be used of any such lowering{
babies . . . degrade one to the state of anxious, fawning suppliants for a smile— Wallace
}{turkeys not in prime condition are degraded on the market
}{that the Duke of York should have concurred in the design of degrading that crown which it was probable that he would himself . . . wear— Macaulay
}It usually implies a real or presumed fault in what is acted on and often adds to the basic meaning a suggestion of humiliation (see degrade under ABASE){ridiculed and degraded for his ideas, he maintained his integrity in the prison cell— D. M. Wolfe & E. M. Geyer
}{the world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians— Disraeli
}It sometimes denotes a formal or ceremonial stripping (as of a priest or a military officer) of outward evidences of station or rank{Dreyfus is degraded before the Army, January 5, 1895— Guérard
}Demote in itself and as distinct from its context does not imply fault to or humiliation of the one demoted{he returns a captain (temporary), is promoted and demoted in the same order, made first lieutenant (permanent)— Mailer
}{the secretaryship was demoted to a subordinate bureau in the Department of the Interior— Neill
}Reduce (see also DECREASE and CONQUER) never wholly loses its basic sense of to make less or smaller; it denotes a lessening in status or dignity whether involving an actual lowering in rank or not{a sergeant reduced to the ranks
}{people in reduced circumstances
}{an old crusader . . . reduced to menial work— Costain
}Declass is typically used with respect to social classes; it may imply a loss of social position especially as a result of one's own actions{even today a woman may declass herself by acts tolerated of her brothers
}Perhaps more frequently it may imply an altering of or a freeing from the restrictions of social status{the growing masses of modern society that stand outside all class-strata. These declassed groups, composed ... of individuals from all strata of society— Arendt
}{a younger generation which feels that the writer ought to be at least a spiritual vagabond, a declassed mind— The Dial
}{members of the declassed intelligentsia— Ridgely Cummings
}Disrate implies a reduction in military and more especially in naval or nautical rank and is used chiefly with reference to petty or noncommissioned officers{the witness had been chief mate . . . but had been disrated ... for drunkenness— Mercantile Marine Mag.
}Antonyms: elevate2 debase, demean, humble, *abase, humiliateAnalogous words: *debase, deprave, debauch, pervert, corrupt, vitiateAntonyms: upliftContrasted words: *exalt, magnify, aggrandize
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.