Definitions

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

  • transitive verb To debase, especially morally; corrupt. synonym: corrupt.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To pervert; distort; speak evil of; misreport; calumniate; vilify.
  • 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.

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

  • transitive verb obsolete To speak ill of; to depreciate; to malign; to revile.
  • transitive verb To make bad or worse; to vitiate; to corrupt.

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

  • verb transitive To speak ill of
  • verb transitive to make (a situation) bad or worse
  • verb transitive to corrupt
  • verb transitive to depreciate
  • verb transitive to malign
  • verb transitive to revile
  • verb transitive to vitiate

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

  • verb corrupt morally or by intemperance or sensuality

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English depraven, to corrupt, from Old French depraver, from Latin dēprāvāre : dē-, de- + prāvus, crooked.]

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Examples

  • Who cares if he robbed from those deprave life from others.

    2010 January « Monster Scifi Show Blog 2010

  • A sustained attack from a foe more insidious and corrupting than anything that had assailed our shores before; a demonic force that destroyed our mental health, that could deprave all who came into contact with it.

    The Evil Dead, The Living Dead and the dead wrong Phelim O'Neill 2010

  • Lord Horror was the last novel to be successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Acts as likely to corrupt and deprave those who read it (the decision was finally overturned on appeal).

    Ballardian » “Driven by Anger”: An Interview with Michael Butterworth (the Savoy interviews, part 1) 2009

  • Two members had remained exceedingly hostile to the case, and because of their refusal to compromise the jury declared: ‘We are unanimously of the opinion that the book in question is calculated to deprave public morals, but at the same time we entirely exonerate the defendants from any corrupt motives in publishing it.’

    Important Battles « Tales from the Reading Room 2009

  • Who cares if he robbed from those deprave life from others.

    2010 January 24 « Monster Scifi Show Blog 2010

  • I didn't know if I could fully deprave myself with an audience if I could see said audience.

    whoring lauren oh 2011

  • Who cares if he robbed from those deprave life from others.

    Vic Mackey vs. Jack Bauer; Who Do You Choose? « Monster Scifi Show Blog 2010

  • For their troubles, Besant and Bradlaugh stood in the dock accused of circulating obscene material calculated to deprave public morals and faced the likelihood of a lengthy stretch in jail.

    Important Battles « Tales from the Reading Room 2009

  • "Obscene in the sense of calculated to disgust rather than to deprave or corrupt, yes."

    She Closed Her Eyes 2010

  • These five persons must then say whether the book or periodical is ‘indecent’, which word ‘shall be construed as including calculated to excite sexual passions or to suggest or incite to sexual immorality or in any other way to corrupt or deprave’, or whether, if it be not ‘indecent’ it inculcates ‘principles contrary to public morality’, or ‘tends to be injurious or detrimental to or subversive of public morality’.

    Later Articles and Reviews W.B. Yeats 2000

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