DEJECT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does deject mean? 

• DEJECT (verb)
  The verb DEJECT has 1 sense:

1. lower someone's spirits; make downhearted

  Familiarity information: DEJECT used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DEJECT (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they deject    ... he / she / it dejects   
Past simple: dejected   
Past participle: dejected   
-ing form: dejecting   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Lower someone's spirits; make downhearted

Classified under:

Verbs of feeling

Synonyms:

cast down; deject; demoralise; demoralize; depress; dismay; dispirit; get down

Context example:

The bad state of her child's health demoralizes her

Hypernyms (to "deject" is one way to...):

discourage (deprive of courage or hope; take away hope from; cause to feel discouraged)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "deject"):

chill (depress or discourage)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody
Something ----s somebody

Sentence example:

The bad news will deject him

Derivation:

dejection (a state of melancholy depression)

 Context examples 

We went to bed greatly dejected.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

They all appeared with dejected looks, and in the meanest habit; most of them telling me, “they died in poverty and disgrace, and the rest on a scaffold or a gibbet.”

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

When is she dejected or melancholy?

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

He was pale and dejected, stained with dust, and exhausted with hunger and fatigue.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In front of and around this dejected group of prisoners were several ape-men, who watched them closely and made all escape impossible.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The other teachers, poor things, were generally themselves too much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He was for ever busy, and the only check to his enjoyments was my sorrowful and dejected mind.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

It is your disposition to be easily dejected and to fancy difficulties greater than they are.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Catherine took up her work directly, saying, in a dejected voice, that “her head did not run upon Bath—much.”

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

The high-spirited, joyous-talking Louisa Musgrove, and the dejected, thinking, feeling, reading, Captain Benwick, seemed each of them everything that would not suit the other.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)