How to Use debase in a Sentence

debase

verb
  • The governor debased himself by lying to the public.
  • The holiday has been debased by commercialism.
  • The most debased and tragic is Jeff, who, with his wife, has worked at the fair for decades.
    — Margaret Lyons, New York Times, 30 May 2024
  • In a way, the trend depends on forms that are otherwise debased.
    — Jesse Green, New York Times, 31 Jan. 2024
  • Within this world no others ex- ist, except as things to be debased.
    — Harpers Magazine, 23 Sep. 2025
  • Why would parents want to publicly debase their own children?
    — Amanda Hess, New York Times, 25 Sep. 2023
  • Within this world no others exist, except as things to be debased.
    — David Wingrave, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
  • Blanche is debasing himself and the law in this shameful pursuit.
    — New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News, 30 Apr. 2026
  • Most of us would deny that any socially useful work can be or should be debasing.
    — Wyatt Williams, Harpers Magazine, 2 June 2026
  • Part of what people don’t like is that Amazon debases the value of things.
    — Scott Shane, New York Times, 30 Nov. 2019
  • Christ reduced to a potato chip, debased and vilified like two thousand years ago.
    — Harper's Magazine, 2 July 2024
  • Christ reduced to a potato chip, debased and vilified like two thousand years ago.
    — Harper's Magazine, 2 July 2024
  • More than fifty golfers were willing to debase themselves in order to grab some of the Saudis’ cash.
    — Zach Helfand, New Yorker, 23 Apr. 2026
  • Renfield is forced to procure his master’s prey and do his every bidding, no matter how debased.
    — Dallasnews.com Staff, Dallas News, 6 Apr. 2023
  • Senate Democrats seem to be competing to debase themselves most.
    — Karl Rove, WSJ, 26 Sep. 2018
  • No one wants to be a jester, debasing oneself for a more powerful person’s amusement.
    — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 27 Mar. 2026
  • Governments need and want to know where the money is, need to control it, debase it, confiscate it, know how much is in play.
    — Clem Chambers, Forbes, 21 Apr. 2021
  • Not only are elections debased in this way, but the rule of law is also reliably drained of meaning through the use of pseudo-law.
    — Moisés Naím, Foreign Affairs, 22 Feb. 2022
  • Of course, there is nothing inherently debased about remakes.
    — WIRED, 22 June 2023
  • In a multiparty system, each group would have to debase its own platform to build a majority.
    — WSJ, 13 Sep. 2022
  • The mashup of pop fantasy and world history deadens the former and debases the latter.
    — Troy Patterson, The New Yorker, 18 Feb. 2020
  • Mayors debase themselves all the time for corporations!
    — Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 26 Aug. 2025
  • The judge was about to sentence one of two kidnappers who debased, raped and beat Hubbard and her friend before forcing them to dig their own graves.
    — Petula Dvorak, Washington Post, 25 Jan. 2024
  • Or take the example of airline miles, a form of private currency that is constantly debased by its issuers.
    — Gideon Lewis-Kraus, WIRED, 18 June 2018
  • The protests highlight the view that what our country stands for is being debased by the actions of certain segments of the population.
    — WSJ, 28 Sep. 2017
  • The speed with which Kelly has debased himself is impressive even when compared to the likes of a Steven Mnuchin.
    — Frank Rich, Daily Intelligencer, 25 Oct. 2017
  • The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.
    — Pete Rizzo, Forbes, 26 Apr. 2021
  • By that time – perhaps only a decade from now, perhaps longer – the dollar may have been debased so badly that one bitcoin might be priced at $1 trillion or more.
    — Dave Birnbaum, Forbes, 24 Nov. 2024
  • The debasing view of girls leads many families to rid themselves of these children, seeing girls as a worthless drain on family resources.
    — Atlanta Life, ajc, 26 May 2017
  • In their view, governments and central banks breached a covenant with their citizens not to debase the currency through profligate spending.
    — Jeff John Roberts, Fortune, 18 Jan. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'debase.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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