How to Use degrade in a Sentence

degrade

verb
  • Scratches on a camera lens will degrade the image.
  • The group accuses the company of degrading women in its ads.
  • He felt degraded by their remarks.
  • Pollution has degraded air quality.
  • It’s stored on hard drives that degrade over time.
    — Reed Albergotti, semafor.com, 20 Feb. 2026
  • The types of image used to degrade women vary from place to place.
    — The Economist, 9 Nov. 2019
  • Here are the signs that your cookware may be degrading.
    — Kelly Vaughan, Martha Stewart, 23 June 2026
  • The team’s goal is to track and predict how asphalt roads degrade.
    — Georgina Jedikovska, Interesting Engineering, 1 Oct. 2025
  • By then the fierce winds had degraded to medium-strength breezes.
    — Zachariah Hughes, Anchorage Daily News, 17 Mar. 2023
  • Gasoline mixed with ethanol degrades even faster than pure gasoline and may not even last three months.
    — Kamron Sanders, Better Homes & Gardens, 19 Oct. 2025
  • One voice uses a racial slur and stereotype to degrade Floyd.
    — Annysa Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 4 June 2020
  • And yet, people continue to mock and degrade him for his lack of flair and skill.
    — SI.com, 2 Nov. 2019
  • No one wants to degrade this Fourth Amendment right, not in this way.
    — Arkansas Online, 24 Jan. 2026
  • The position that allows thugs to get in your face and yell, curse and degrade you.
    — Jonathan Bullington, The Courier-Journal, 22 Sep. 2020
  • The warning reminds boaters that the foam life jackets can degrade and fail.
    — Cameron Knight, The Enquirer, 30 June 2021
  • Today, less than half of that water makes the trip, and what does is degraded.
    — T. Edward Nickens, Field & Stream, 6 Dec. 2019
  • Potting mixes degrade over time and may start to drain poorly.
    — Lauren Landers, Better Homes & Gardens, 12 Apr. 2026
  • When an egg sits and matures in storage, the white will begin to break down or degrade.
    — Nina Moskowitz, Bon Appétit, 16 Feb. 2024
  • These practices degrade soil and emit a vast amount of greenhouse gases.
    — Chad Frischmann, Scientific American, 1 Oct. 2021
  • Long-term drought has degraded the old-growth forest where the squirrels live.
    — John Leos, AZCentral.com, 3 Sep. 2025
  • All of these things can degrade your car’s clear coat over time and may eventually lead to rust.
    — Karen Brewer Grossman, Southern Living, 30 May 2026
  • Clouds, rain and even tree canopy overhead can further degrade the signal.
    — Tereza Pultarova, Space.com, 27 Oct. 2025
  • Avoid light, heat, and moisture, which can degrade the quality of your spices.
    — Katie Rosenhouse, Southern Living, 18 Oct. 2025
  • Freezing could also degrade the oil.
    — Brandee Gruener, Southern Living, 19 May 2026
  • Rinse the spot with clean water to remove any soap residue, which might degrade the fabric over time.
    — Nafeesah Allen, Better Homes & Gardens, 27 July 2024
  • And although ground beef stays good in the freezer for a long time, its flavor does degrade over time.
    — Martha Sorren, Woman's Day, 11 May 2020
  • Still, speaker cables will degrade over time like most cables.
    — Bestreviews, Mercury News, 9 Jan. 2026
  • My philosophy is to build the kids up and never yell at them or degrade them.
    — Emmett Hall, sun-sentinel.com, 15 Sep. 2021
  • The neurotoxin will just need to degrade in your system on its own over time.
    — Loren Savini, Allure, 3 Nov. 2022
  • The danger of a work like Snow is that the copy might degrade the original.
    — Paul Franz, The Atlantic, 21 Oct. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'degrade.' 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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