Meaning & use
dehumanize
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Meanings
verbtransitive
To treat people as if they were not fully human, denying them dignity, feelings, or individuality.
Grammar: Takes an object: dehumanize a group of people.
Patterns
- dehumanize someone
- dehumanize a group
Propaganda often tries to dehumanize the enemy.
Calling people by numbers can dehumanize them.
Hateful jokes dehumanize the people they target.
verbtransitive
To make a place or activity feel cold, impersonal, and mechanical by removing warmth and individual attention.
Grammar: Takes an object that is a thing or process: dehumanize the workplace.
Patterns
- dehumanize something
Critics say the huge assembly line dehumanizes the workers.
Automated phone menus can dehumanize customer service.
The cold paperwork dehumanizes the whole experience.
Word forms
| third person singular | dehumanizes |
|---|---|
| past tense | dehumanized |
| past participle | dehumanized |
| -ing form | dehumanizing |
Common combinations
- dehumanize the enemy
- Leaders in wartime often dehumanize the enemy.
- dehumanizing language
- The report condemned dehumanizing language.
- dehumanizing treatment
- The prisoners suffered dehumanizing treatment.
- feel dehumanized
- Patients can feel dehumanized by long waits and impersonal staff.
Synonyms and how they differ
- demean
- Demean means to lower someone's dignity, but dehumanize goes further by denying their human nature.
- objectify
- Objectify treats a person as a thing, usually for use or looks, which is narrower than dehumanize.
- degrade
- Degrade means to humiliate or lower in rank, without the idea of denying humanity.
- depersonalize
- Depersonalize removes individual character, while dehumanize also denies human worth.
Opposites
Word family
- dehumanization noun
- the process of denying people human qualities
- dehumanizing adjective
- causing people to lose human dignity
- human adjective
- relating to people
- humanize verb
- to make more humane or personal
Commonly confused: dehumanize or inhumane? dehumanize or dehumidify?
dehumanize vs inhumane
Inhumane describes cruelty, while dehumanize is a verb about treating people as less than human.
dehumanize vs dehumidify
Dehumidify means to remove moisture from air, and is unrelated.
Practice
Using only prison numbers instead of names can ____ the inmates.
Choose one answer.
Replacing names with numbers strips individuality, which is dehumanizing. Humanize is the opposite, and the other two are positive.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “dehumanize”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.