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he state of being depraved or degenerated; degeneracy; depravity. The depravation of his moral character destroyed his judgment. Sir G. C. Lewis.

The stae of being depraved or corrupted; a vitiated state of moral character; general badness of character; wickedness of mind or heart; absence of religious feeling and principle. Total depravity. See Original sin, and Calvinism.

o an unworthy use; -- the opposite of consecrate. The [Russian] clergy can not suffer corporal punishment without being previously desecrated. W. Tooke. The founders of monasteries imprecated evil on those who should desecrate their donations. Salmon.

f or to; as, intemperance is destructive of health; evil examples are destructive to the morals of youth. Time's destructive power. Wordsworth. Destructive distillation. See Distillation. -- Destructive sorties ( (Logic), a process of reasoning which involves the denial of the first of a series of dependent propositio…

erogate; to defame; -- often with from. It has been the fashion to detract both from the moral and literary character of Cicero. V. Knox.

iminution; loss; damage; -- used very generically; as, detriments to property, religion, morals, etc. I can repair That detriment, if such it be. Milton.

tted or intended to teach; conveying instruction; preceptive; instructive; teaching some moral lesson; as, didactic essays. "Didactical writings." Jer. Taylor. The finest didactic poem in any language. Macaulay.

isabled; deprivation or want of ability; absence of competent physical, intellectual, or moral power, means, fitness, and the like. Grossest faults, or disabilities to perform what was covenanted. Milton. Chatham refused to see him, pleading his disability. Bancroft.

ent of the faculties by instruction and exercise; training, whether physical, mental, or moral. Wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity. Bacon. Discipline aims at the removal of bad habits and the substitution of good ones, especially those of order, regularity, and obedience. C. J. Smith.…

To express one's self in oral discourse; to expose one's views; to talk in a continuous or formal manner; to hold forth; to speak; to converse. Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear. Shak.

ady; affection; illness; sickness; disorder; -- applied figuratively to the mind, to the moral character and habits, to institutions, the state, etc. Diseases desperate grown, By desperate appliances are relieved. Shak. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public counsels have, in truth, been t…

Divested of a body; ceased to be corporal; incorporeal. The disembodied spirits of the dead. Bryant.

in; to cause (any one) loathing, as of the stomach; to excite aversion in; to offend the moral taste of; -- often with at, with, or by. To disgust him with the world and its vanities. Prescott. Ærius is expressly declared . . . to have been disgusted at failing. J. H. Newman. Alarmed and disgusted by the proceedings of…

The anterior surface or oral area of coelenterate animals, as of sea anemones.

Offensive to good morals and public decency; notoriously offensive; as, a disorderly house.

In a dispositive manner; by natural or moral disposition. [Obs.] Sir T. Browne. Do dispositively what Moses is recorded to have done literally, . . . break all the ten commandments at once. Boyle.

One of the transverse, calcareous partitions between the radiating septa of a coral.

A formal or elaborate argumentative discourse, oral or written; a disquisition; an essay; a discussion; as, Dissertations on the Prophecies.

Loosed from restraint; esp., loose in morals and conduct; recklessly abandoned to sensual pleasures; profligate; wanton; lewd; debauched. "A wild and dissolute soldier." Motley.

State or quality of being dissolute; looseness of morals and manners; addictedness to sinful pleasures; debauchery; dissipation. Chivalry had the vices of dissoluteness. Bancroft.