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Definition of degradation:

  • (noun) changing to a lower state (a less respected state)
  • (noun) a low or downcast state;

Sentence Examples:

He questioned himself, saying, "What is the cause of the exaltation of this, and the degradation of that, for we have fancied their converse?"

The generous assurance he gave me of a warm and affectionate sympathy in my destiny, nearly atoned for twenty years of sorrow and degradation.

Amid the increased dangers of society, what is to protect her, and lift her from feebleness and degradation, if not personal character?

The memory of their past misfortunes and the present reality of their servitude, and degradation caused them to yearn for a deliverer.

He ordered an ecclesiastical court to investigate the charges, and the result was as usual, that the punishment awarded was only degradation.

This workhouse experience was repeated several times and was regarded afterward as the lowest depth of moral degradation of his whole career.

Architecture seems highly sensible of mental degradation, and the caprices of an over-indulged taste, tend rapidly to deprive her of every beauty.

Colors, sounds, shapes, fair words and gorgeous imaginings are instruments of degradation and death if they are a finer veneer over what is false.

Degradation of energy, or Dissipation of energy (Physics), the transformation of energy into some form in which it is less available for doing work.

There is a degree of degradation which changes scorn into pity, and makes us sincerely sympathize with those whom we most heartily despise.

It was all insult, injury, degradation, in whatever light I could view it, and every feeling in my nature was stung to exasperation.

We must seek to exalt ourselves, to live in the idea; sexual passion was a merely inferior state, but mean content was the true degradation.

The relative position here assigned to the two poets seems to be rather an exaltation of Dunbar than a degradation of Chaucer. Lockhart, Vol.

For, stupid and besotted as we are, we must all at some time of our life have felt the bondage and degradation of the senses.

The very outcast of the streets has pity upon her sister in degradation, when the seal of promised maternity is impressed upon her.

They have been for many generations slaveholders, and no nation ever yet escaped the degradation which that most odious of all customs entails.

To do this, we must distinguish between degradation and a mere degeneration which involves a return to simpler conditions as an adaptation to changed environment.

She felt again on her lips the degradation of the first kiss of this man whose suppliant, pitiful love was hideous to her.

What a relief to the heart amid all the mental misery, the moral degradation, and physical wretchedness exhibited around us on every side!

The beauty of works of art and the infinite charm of nature prevented this moral degradation from degenerating entirely into ugliness and vulgarity.

No man should know how much I felt my violent degradation from being captain of a gun, to have to tread mercantile boards!

Broken reprobate as he was, the halo of past greatness followed him down through life to the lowest depths of degradation and penury.

We protest against the degradation of the architect from his high and noble estate to the rank of a mere decorator, however skillful.

The very outcast of the streets has pity upon her sister in degradation when the seal of promised maternity is impressed upon her.

It has become an axiom in missionary work that no race can be lifted out of ignorance and degradation except as its women are elevated.

It is the people who wielded that instrument of degradation, and their descendants, who wish to draw the bonds of Empire closer to-day.

I should probably know as much Latin as French, if Latin had not been made the excuse for my school imprisonment and degradation.

On August 25 came the crowning act of what the reformers considered their most complete triumph, and the regent her deepest degradation.

She wrote a full account of her stage career, morbidly exaggerating the vulgarity of her performance and the degradation of her character.

Why, Nelson would speak from his monument, and the Iron Duke from his equestrian statue, and forbid the degradation of their country.

The door, however, somewhat to his astonishment, swung open at a touch, and he crept in noiselessly with an even greater sense of degradation.

Abhorring equally the toil and the degradation, he deemed it a duty to prevent such a fall, and put his hope in his uncle.

Vincent Egg, after a half-century of struggle with the world; and something of an imposing figure he made, too, in his defeat and degradation.

We must bear with the shame, the degradation, the wickedness of those we have loved, of those we still love spite of bitter repulse.

It has done, it is doing more to rescue the African character from degradation, than could be done by a thousand volumes against prejudice.

A sane and healthy mind would be as incapable of the moral degradation of the novel as of the decadent morality of the philosophy.

This period is divided into four phases, two of them ascending phases of vibration or gradation, and two descending phases of vibration or degradation.

The latter term probably comprehended those citizens who, from degeneracy of manners or other causes, had undergone some kind of civil degradation.

Said Frank, in great distress, not that he feared the advancing bayonets, but he remembered John Winch's arrest, and dreaded a similar degradation.

His pessimism, indeed, is inexorable, and he pushes the misfortune, or more often the degradation, of his characters to its extreme logical conclusion.

They are wandering, in unnumbered tribes, through vast wildernesses, where generation after generation have passed away, in gross ignorance and almost brutal degradation.

His sneer at the unholy bargain he was about to make told Madame de Ruth that he was fully aware of the degradation of it.

In this way they were dragged down to the last stage of degradation, and became the slaves of those whom they had enslaved.

And yet, through all these hateful years, thousands and thousands of noble men and women denounced the degradation and the crime.

The story of this war furnishes the final evidence as to the corruption and degradation of Roman politics and officials at this time.

He felt his own degradation keenly, when to remedy it was too late; and a temper naturally excitable, had now become most dangerous.

It was with a sense of desperate degradation that he forced himself to master the writing, pathetic in its feebleness, confused and indistinct.

Are we thence to infer the inferiority of the officers thus elected, and the consequent degradation of the countries over which they presided?

Our informant was obliged to relinquish his position in one of these establishments, because he could not lower himself to the required depth of degradation.

A rush of shamed degradation flashed over him, overwhelming him completely, and before he could prevent it his honest, contrite heart had spoken.

This was evidently an unexpected announcement to George Winslow who glanced up eagerly, as if in sudden exultation over the degradation of his superior officer.

How could it be otherwise with this family than that they should be sunk into a most deplorable state of degradation and depravity?

She mourned over the shameful infatuation of Eudora, and she acutely felt the degradation attached to her own accidental share in the scene.

What can be done against the magnanimous resolution of the great to accomplish the degradation and the ruin of their own character and situation?

One official was actually marked for degradation for having submitted a disfigurement which turned out to be a carelessly printed, or rough, proof impression.

He has espoused the interests of that party which seeks to perpetuate among the mass of the people ignorance, superstition, poverty, and social degradation.

A little farther on is the vile dance house into which the inhabitants of this neighborhood crawl for the lowest stage of their degradation.

This is its ultimate state of degradation, and from that state no methods with which we are acquainted can transform any portion of it.

The Social Contract was his answer, and there we can see the living idea of equality detaching itself from the dead theory of degradation.

I excused my infatuation on the ground of magnanimity, telling myself that if I could possess her, I could save her from certain degradation.

The influences of the sphere of refinement must have a tendency to refine: the miseries of the poor must produce degradation, immorality, and recklessness.

He was acquainted with others who carried their heads much higher than himself, who yet suffered the convenient degradation of commercial affinities.

One had to mingle with them to find how sore they were at the degradation of being guarded by these runaway slaves of theirs.

This young creature would get protection and care, and the marks of degradation be effaced from her body, anger from her soul.

In this deplorable condition of affairs, we were saved by the action of the same great principle of sexual selection to which we owed our degradation.

It implied the extinction of patriotism, and the general degradation of the people, or else the fabric of despotism could not have been erected.

There is still an affectionate remembrance of her among the present inhabitants, whose mothers she helped out of their degradation into a better life.

My expensive pets felt their degradation in spite of my best efforts and determined to sever their connection with such a plebeian place.

If so, to worship him would be no degradation to the soul; even if absolute omnipotence were not attributed, nay, nor a past eternal existence.

And yet all that has been done, and is being done, seems almost swallowed up in the depth of its degradation and savagery.

Napoleon is pleased to call a treaty of peace, and what, it seems to me, would be but a pact with degradation, dishonor, and disgrace.

And my generosity in including my sister in my plans for salvation was equalled by her magnanimity in assuming part of my degradation.

This was afterwards to cause the degradation to the ranks of the chief officer of engineers who was responsible for this unpardonable lapse.

To prevent this species of intellectual degradation, we must in education be careful to rank mere mechanical talents below the exercise of the mental powers.

The former would never have submitted to the degradation; they would not, for their lives, have so hampered the hands of their husbands.

About her pressed and crowded the representatives of all races and nations of that multitude which material progress has raised from slavish degradation.

Criminal as he was, his joy in his abasement, his glory in his miserable isolation from humanity, was a doom of degradation pitiable to behold.

The life of chance desire, unregulated by any subordinating principle, then, is the third stage of the descent and degradation of the soul.

His degradation, therefore, from the condition which he had enjoyed with such wanton thoughtlessness, was considered by many as an occasion of triumph.

Other refinements of torture are the infliction of degradation and mental suffering by breaking caste, and by exposing the victims to various indignities.

It was thought well that the American should be made to see in public the degradation of the abject creature with whom he had sympathized.

In the midst of his bright career he stopped short; a change came over him, and he commenced his present life of degradation and drudgery.

After this experience I thought it wiser to tempt fate no further and meekly resign myself to the degradation of a temporary change of sex.

The degradation of Dreyfus, whether it was just or not, made on all (you were of the number I remember) a painful and depressing impression.

Could you expect one who had been humiliated and shamed and broken to set up the author of his degradation as his ideal and pattern?

This little imp, undeterred by hardship, degradation, and misery, had developed into one of the greatest geniuses that ever trod the English stage.

Through all the furnace of his degradation his youth yet clung to him like an impalpable veil that no suffering could rend or destroy.

He died in a drunken brawl, leaving in his works the evidence of talents and qualities which the degradation of his life had failed to destroy.

Then he cuts the body in pieces; and the degradation consists in the fragmentary shape in which the prisoner has to appear in heaven.

His bounty will overshadow them, and this race will day by day progress, and be delivered from its age-long obscurity and degradation.

We know that he either did not see or purposely ignored certain aspects of Indian life, notably the physical dirt and the moral degradation.

It is by the aid of alcoholic orgies that most girls are seduced, and by chronic drunkenness that they sustain themselves in their degradation.

He had grown to loathe his life, and the spectacle of her daily degradation made him anxious to shake off friends and old belongings.

He was more indignant on poor old Linden's account than on his own, and was oppressed by a sense of impotence and shameful degradation.

He expounded them with enthusiasm, and we tried not to betray an ignorance, which in some of us would have been a sort of hereditary degradation.

It would have been a perversion of history, a degradation of great deeds, a reckless wasting of the Nation's accumulated store of cherished memories of heroism.

These successive steps in the degradation of food habits, are not always the clean-cut things they might be inferred to be from the foregoing.

She then adopted the submission of a slave, and regarded it as a meritorious deed to accept the degradation in which her husband placed her.

They will soon be legislated out of the free states, and their condition in the slave states, must necessarily be one of wretchedness and degradation.

Class supremacy can rest only on class degradation; and when the workers are segregated in the Ghetto, they cannot escape the consequent degradation.