DEPRAVE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does deprave mean? 

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

1. corrupt morally or by intemperance or sensuality

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• DEPRAVE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they deprave    ... he / she / it depraves   
Past simple: depraved   
Past participle: depraved   
-ing form: depraving   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Corrupt morally or by intemperance or sensuality

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Synonyms:

corrupt; debase; debauch; demoralise; demoralize; deprave; misdirect; pervert; profane; subvert; vitiate

Context example:

corrupt the morals

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

alter; change; modify (cause to change; make different; cause a transformation)

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

carnalise; carnalize; sensualise; sensualize (debase through carnal gratification)

infect (corrupt with ideas or an ideology)

lead astray; lead off (teach immoral behavior to)

poison (spoil as if by poison)

bastardise; bastardize (change something so that its value declines; for example, art forms)

suborn (incite to commit a crime or an evil deed)

Sentence frames:

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

Derivation:

depravation; depravity (moral perversion; impairment of virtue and moral principles)

 Context examples 

“They are a depraved, worthless set. I would have her whipped!”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Everybody believed that poor girl to be guilty; and if she could have committed the crime for which she suffered, assuredly she would have been the most depraved of human creatures.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I was rich enough now—yet poor to hideous indigence: a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of me.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Alas! I had turned loose into the world a depraved wretch, whose delight was in carnage and misery; had he not murdered my brother?

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)