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

This report gives me great pleasure, for to live in bad society will deprave the best manners, and to live in good will improve the worst.

From Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume 6 by J. G. (John Gibson) Lockhart

She furthermore held that hereditary rule depraves the best dispositions, and produces the monsters that have horrified the world.

From The Branding Needle, or The Monastery of Charolles A Tale of the First Communal Charter by Eugène Sue

Halleck had come home in broken health, and had promised his family, with the self-contempt that depraves, not to go away again, since the change had done him no good.

From A Modern Instance by William Dean Howells

I. The conflicting evidence, in consequence of hard swearing, prompted by gold-thirst, the most horrible demon that depraves the human heart, even a naturally honest heart.—II.

From The Eureka Stockade by Raffaello Carboni

At the same time the State depraves those who govern.

From Anarchism by Paul Eltzbacher

The letters and arts engender luxury, and luxury is one of the powerful instruments of corruption in morals: it destroys courage, lowers the character, and, by another consequence, depraves and corrupts the taste even.

From Elements of Morals With Special Application of the Moral Law to the Duties of the Individual and of Society and the State by Paul Janet

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

Judge John Dodd KC told Wood Green Crown Court that Chan was a "perverse and depraved" man who had "clearly lost all sense of moral compass".

From BBC ● Feb. 12, 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

A naive expression used by Agnes was represented as depraving the one; a low and somewhat vulgar phrase was insisted upon as calculated to ruin the other.

From Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 A Series of Pen and Pencil Sketches of the Lives of More Than 200 of the Most Prominent Personages in History by Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

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

Truth is the only basis of virtue; and we cannot, without depraving our minds, endeavour to please a lover or husband, but in proportion as he pleases us.

From Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

If affection lead a man to favor the less worthy in desert, let him do it, without depraving or disabling the better deserver.

From The Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon

Better to devote one’s self to a useful and humble profession than employ one’s talent in depraving morals, and degrading souls.

From Elements of Morals With Special Application of the Moral Law to the Duties of the Individual and of Society and the State by Paul Janet