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To reduce in estimation, character, or reputation; to lessen the value of; to lower the physical, moral, or intellectual character of; to debase; to bring shame or contempt upon; to disgrace; as, vice degrades a man. O miserable mankind, to what fall Degraded, to what wretched state reserved! Milton. He pride . . . str…

Reduced in rank, character, or reputation; debased; sunken; low; base. The Netherlands . . . were reduced practically to a very degraded condition. Motley.

Characterized by dehiscence; opening in some definite way, as the capsule of a plant.

se, effeminacy; as, great delicacy of behavior; delicacy in doing a kindness; delicacy of character that unfits for earnest action. You know your mother's delicacy in this point. Cowper.

Concealment; seclusion. The mental organization of the novelist must be characterized, to speak craniologically, by an extraordinary development of the passion for delitescency. Sir W. Scott.

To deprive of material or physical qualities or characteristics. Dematerializing matter by stripping if of everything which . . . has distinguished matter. Milman.

A work of sculpture of the above character. See Alto-rilievo.

A woman of doubtful reputation or suspected character; an adventuress. [Colloq.] De Quincey.

Pertaining to, or characteristic of, a demon or evil spirit; devilish; as, a demoniac being; demoniacal practices. Sarcastic, demoniacal laughter. Thackeray.

Of or pertaining to the people; popular; common. Demotic alphabet or character, a form of writing used in Egypt after six or seven centuries before Christ, for books, deeds, and other such writings; a simplified form of the hieratic character; -- called also epistolographic character, and enchorial character. See Encho…

To divest or deprive of national character or rights. Bonaparte's decree denationalizes, as he calls it, all ships that have touched at a British port. Cobbett. An expatriated, denationalized race. G. Eliot.

To give a name to; to characterize by an epithet; to entitle; to name; to designate. Passions commonly denominating selfish. Hume.

Characterized by or containing a denunciation; minatory; accusing; threatening; as, severe and denunciatory language.

ate 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.

Tending or designed to depredate; characterized by depredation; plundering; as, a depredatory incursion.

To divest of provincial quality or characteristics.

Expressing, serving for, or characterized by, derision. "Derisive taunts." Pope. -- De*ri"sive*ly, adv. -- De*ri"sive*ness, n.

To act beneath one-s rank, place, birth, or character; to degenerate. [R.] You are a fool granted; therefore your issues, being foolish, do not derogate. Shak. Would Charles X. derogate from his ancestors Would he be the degenerate scion of that royal line Hazlitt.

ry to their other. Macaulay. Derogatory clause in a testament (Law), a sentence of secret character inserted by the testator alone, of which he reserves the knowledge to himself, with a condition that no will he may make thereafter shall be valid, unless this clause is inserted word for word; -- a precaution to guard a…