Meaning & use
degrading
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Meanings
adjectivecomparabledisapproving
Making someone feel ashamed or lowering their dignity and respect.
Grammar: Used before a noun or after be: a degrading job; the treatment was degrading.
Patterns
- degrading to someone
- degrading treatment
Prisoners complained of degrading treatment.
He found it degrading to beg for help.
The show was criticized for its degrading jokes about women.
adjectivebefore a nountechnical
Causing something, such as soil, a material or a signal, to break down or get worse.
Grammar: Technical use from the verb degrade: degrading soil, degrading plastic.
The degrading bridge needed urgent repair.
Degrading wetlands lose their ability to filter water.
A degrading signal made the call hard to hear.
Word forms
| comparative | more degrading |
|---|---|
| superlative | most degrading |
Common combinations
- degrading treatment
- The law forbids cruel or degrading treatment.
- degrading work
- No honest job should be called degrading work.
- feel degrading
- The search felt degrading to many travelers.
- degrading conditions
- Workers lived in degrading conditions.
- degrading remarks
- Degrading remarks hurt morale.
Synonyms and how they differ
- humiliating
- Humiliating stresses the shame felt by the victim, while degrading stresses loss of dignity.
- demeaning
- Demeaning is very close, but it can describe something that makes a person seem less important.
- dehumanizing
- Dehumanizing is stronger and means treating people as though they are not human.
- belittling
- Belittling makes someone or something seem small, but it is not necessarily as shameful.
Opposites
Word family
- degrade verb
- to lower in dignity or quality
- degradation noun
- the process of becoming worse or less respected
- degraded adjective
- damaged or lowered in quality
- degradingly adverb
- in a way that humiliates
Commonly confused: degrading or degraded? degrading or downgrading?
degrading vs degraded
Degraded describes the state of being lowered, while degrading describes what causes it.
degrading vs downgrading
Downgrading means moving something to a lower grade or level, not necessarily humiliating.
Practice
Forcing staff to wear a humiliating costume was seen as ___ and was quickly stopped.
Choose one answer.
Degrading means lowering a person's dignity, which fits a humiliating costume. The other options are positive.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “degrading”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.