deprave

"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

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

The legal definition of obscenity in Great Britain is that which tends "to deprave and corrupt."

From Time Magazine Archive

He allows, besides, that custom, education, and example, may blind and deprave our intellectual and moral powers; but denies that the whole of our notions and sentiments could result from education.

From Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics by Alexander Bain

All around him the fish in their perfect freshness exhaled a pleasant perfume, that slightly sharp, irritating perfume which depraves the appetite.

From The Fat and the Thin by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

Civilisation, in this case, depraves the birds, as often it does men.

From The Truth About Woman by C. Gasquoine (Catherine Gasquoine) Hartley

Thus the host of Moumouth became his tyrant; so true is it that personal interest depraves the best natures.

From The Story of a Cat by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

At the same time the State depraves those who govern.

From Anarchism by Paul Eltzbacher

For the cessation of the exercise of reason, by no means depraves it.

From Reason, The Only Oracle of Man Or a Compendius System of Natural Religion by Ethan Allen

He also accused Donaldson of telling lies many times over the years and added, he never imagined the former party leader could have been so "depraved".

From BBC ● Jun. 23, 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

In actuality, “The Housemaid” is about as depraved and delicious as a mainstream film can get, packed with narrative twists and guffaw-worthy choices from everyone involved.

From Salon ● Jan. 31, 2026

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

From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt

Consequently its real action, always in contradiction of the humanitarian theories which it professes, has constantly exercised a disastrous and depraving influence.

From God and the State by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin

It is a dreadful example for younger artists, and I think Wagner is depraving them.

From Music-Study in Germany from the Home Correspondence of Amy Fay by Amy Fay

The vague phrases of depraving manners and applying revolutionary principles perfidiously, were exactly calculated to smite the band of violent men whose conduct was to Robespierre the scandal of the Revolution.

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

The depraving effects of this freedom of divorce upon both sexes, may be easily imagined.

From The Women of the Arabs by Charles S. (Charles Seymour) Robinson

Separated from one another in actual date by 50, perhaps by 100 years,742 they must needs have branched off from a common corrupt ancestor, and straightway become exposed continuously to fresh depraving influences.

From The Revision Revised by John William Burgon