To pervert; distort; speak evil of; misreport; calumniate; vilify. See! how the stubborne damzell doth deprave My simple meaning with disdaynfull scorne. Spenser, Sonnets, xxix.Gone about to deprave and calumniate the person and writings of Quintus Horatius Flaccus. B. Jonson, Poetaster, v. 1.Unjustly thou depravest it with the name Of servitude, to serve whom God ordains. Milton, P. L., vi. 174.
To make bad or worse; pervert; vitiate; corrupt: as, to deprave the heart, mind, understanding, will, tastes, etc.; to deprave the morals, government, laws, etc. Whose pryde depraves each other better part. Spenser, Sonnets, xxxi.All things proceed, and up to him return, If not depraved from good. Milton, P. L., v. 471.The ingenuity once so conspicuously displayed in every department of physical and moral science has been depraved into a timid and servile cunning. Macaulay, Moore's Byron.The ceremony of kneeling at the Sacrament was included among the rest: but the free and glad acknowledgment of that ceremony was not to be expected from one who had notoriously depraved it. R. W. Dixon, Hist. Church of Eng., xx.
The prevalent anarchy caused by the long minorities of the Stuart kings, and by the interminable wars with England, and the difficulty of communications with Rome, had enabled the nobles thus to rob and deprave the Church, and so to provide themselves with moral reasons good for robbing her again; as a punishment for the iniquities which they had themselves introduced!
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John Knox and the Reformation
With the right or wrong, the honour or shame, of their actions, he has nothing to do: that they are so, and act so, is their concern, not his; and his business is, not to reform nor deprave, not to censure nor approve them, but simply to tell the truth about them.
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Shakespeare His Life Art And Characters
They have at length discovered, that all the republican tragedies, flat farces, and heavy comedies, are attributable to Mr. Pitt, who has thought proper to corrupt the authors, with a view to deprave the public taste.
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A Residence in France During the Years 1792 1793 1794 and 1795
Then, gentlemen, you should consider whether that particular course of proceeding is inconsistent with morality, whether it would have a tendency to degrade and deprave the man or woman.
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Autobiographical Sketches
Should man deprave, and should not God deprive?
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England's Antiphon