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Debase is often used to talk about someone's lowered status or character. People are constantly blustering about the debased tastes of the ordinary American, and especially the debased music of America's youth. A commentator might observe that both candidates had managed to debase themselves by the end of a political campaign. Debase has a special meaning in economics: From time to time, governments find that they need to quietly debase their countries' currency by reducing the percentage of valuable metal in its coins; if they don't, the metal may become more valuable than the coin and people will begin melting the coins down and reselling the metal.
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Examples of debase in a Sentence
Ansel Lindner, Forbes, 24 Oct. 2024
Trump was really at that Buck’s County McDonald’s, debasing himself for swing-state votes in the same way that candidates have for generations (see: Rick Perry eating a corn dog in 2011).
—Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 21 Oct. 2024
Expanding the Vocabulary With great discipline and sanity, Kamala Harris has been navigating a minefield of Trumpian insults and attempts to debase her.
—Patricia J. Williams, The New York Review of Books, 18 Oct. 2024
Antiestablishment fever has debased policy debate and loosened the checks on executive power that generate consistency.
—Daniel W. Drezner, Foreign Affairs, 13 Apr. 2020
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“Debase.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/debase. Accessed 26 Nov. 2024.
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