debase

That trade is based on the view that investors will turn to alternative assets like gold or bitcoin on worries that stubborn government deficits and higher inflation will debase currencies like the dollar.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 27, 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

And yet, if my best reason for staying in peculiardom didn’t want me anymore, I wouldn’t debase myself by clinging to her.

From "Hollow City" by Ransom Riggs

In order to emerge victorious in his quest to bring the World Cup to Mexico, De la Torre debases himself and backstabs shamelessly.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 4, 2026

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

Said corporation's very wealthy owner insults the court and her client, then debases Julius himself after the judge has the man jailed for contempt, which he is well within his rights to do.

From Salon ● May 14, 2020

Rather than explore complex issues and troubling experiences by way of sci-fi future-historical fantasy, “Alita: Battle Angel” debases them—and its exemplary character—under the force of a blinkered and reactionary model of drama and business alike.

From The New Yorker ● Feb. 13, 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

A currency is never debased in the hearing.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 15, 2026

At a time when even the greatest achievements are debased in a culture that gives equal weight to meritricious novelty, is it even worth the trouble?

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 8, 2026

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

“They also debased their currency, undercut the universality of the iron law, and antagonized the Adem.”

From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss

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