Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To lower in quality or character; debase.
  • transitive verb To declare or prove (someone) to be a bastard.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To declare or prove to be a bastard; stigmatize as a bastard.
  • To beget out of wedlock.
  • To render mongrel or hybrid; make degenerate; debase: as, “a bastardized race of the Romans,”
  • To become degenerate.
  • Also spelled bastardise.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To make or prove to be a bastard; to stigmatize as a bastard; to declare or decide legally to be illegitimate.
  • transitive verb rare To beget out of wedlock.
  • transitive verb to change something (for example, art forms) so that its value declines; to debase.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To claim or demonstrate that someone is a bastard, or illegitimate.
  • verb To reduce from a higher to a lower state; to debase.
  • verb To introduce debased elements into.
  • verb To beget out of wedlock.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb change something so that its value declines; for example, art forms
  • verb declare a child to be illegitimate

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

bastard +‎ -ize

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