decry

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DFW's Sentence Another is that the ever increasing number of ideological news outlets creates precisely the kind of relativism that cultural conservatives decry, a kind of epistemic free-for-all in which "the truth" is wholly a matter of perspective and agenda.

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Definitions (8)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. transitive verb To condemn openly.
  2. transitive verb To depreciate (currency, for example) by official proclamation or by rumor.
  3. Syntax Note
    Synonyms: decry, disparage, depreciate, derogate, belittle, minimize, downgrade
    These verbs mean to think, write, or speak of as being of little value or importance. Decry implies open denunciation or condemnation: A staunch materialist, he decries economy.
    Disparage often implies the communication of a low opinion by indirection: Many critics disparage psychoanalysis as being a pseudoscience.
    To depreciate is to assign a lower than customary value to someone or something: Some musicologists depreciate Liszt's compositions.
    Derogate implies a detraction that impairs: People often derogate what they don't understand.
    Belittle and minimize mean to make less important, but minimize strongly implies the minimum level: He belittled the child's attempts to draw. She tried to minimize my accomplishment.
    To downgrade is to minimize in importance or estimation: Her rival downgraded the painting, calling it decorative but superficial.

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Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (50)

  • Middle-aged men might taunt, decry, jibe, revert to childishness in these circumstances, but I figured their whole conditioning would prevent actual personal violence. —  APRIL, 1953 Vol
  • Amused to find the image of the Nobel Laureate in a place whose moral foundation he would vehemently decry, Chemayev moved closer to the set and ordered another vodka. —  F ;SF; - vol 100 issue 03 - March 2001
  • I decry your knowledge because you don't even know the basic of information that something as easy as Wikipedia can provide. —  reddit.com: what's new online!
  • The incident was so grotesque, and the propaganda so blatant, that Israeli human rights group B'Tselem saw fit to decry both. —  Progressive Bloggers
  • I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few. —  Cranmer
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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Used in the same contextWord Family

decry:   decried ·  decrying ·  decries
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. French décrier, from Old French descrier : des-, de- + crier, to cry; see cry.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from French décrier, Old French descrier, cry down, discredit, disparage, from des- (Latin dis-) + crier, cry: see cry.
 

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/dəˈkraɪ/
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