Meaning & use
dehumanizing
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Meaning
adjectivecomparabledisapproving
Treating people as if they have no dignity, feelings or personal worth, as though they were objects or animals.
Grammar: Describes treatment, language or conditions; British spelling is dehumanising.
Patterns
- dehumanizing to someone
Prisoners described the crowded cells as dehumanizing.
Calling people vermin is dehumanizing language.
Many workers found the strict monitoring dehumanizing.
Word forms
| comparative | more dehumanizing |
|---|---|
| superlative | most dehumanizing |
Common combinations
- dehumanizing language
- The report condemned dehumanizing language in the broadcast.
- dehumanizing treatment
- He suffered dehumanizing treatment in the camp.
- dehumanizing effect
- Constant surveillance had a dehumanizing effect.
- deeply dehumanizing
- The conditions were deeply dehumanizing.
- dehumanizing experience
- Waiting hours without any information was a dehumanizing experience.
Synonyms and how they differ
- degrading
- Degrading lowers a person's dignity, whereas dehumanizing goes further by denying that the person is fully human.
- demeaning
- Demeaning suggests making someone feel small or unimportant, which is milder than dehumanizing.
- inhumane
- Inhumane describes cruelty or lack of compassion in an action, while dehumanizing describes how a person is portrayed or regarded.
- humiliating
- Humiliating focuses on causing shame in a particular moment, not on denying someone's humanity.
Opposites
Word family
- dehumanize verb
- to treat someone as less than human
- dehumanization noun
- the process of denying a person's humanity
- humane adjective
- showing kindness and compassion
- human adjective
- relating to people
Commonly confused: dehumanizing or inhuman?
dehumanizing vs inhuman
Inhuman describes extreme cruelty or something not seeming human, while dehumanizing describes the effect of making people seem less than human.
Practice
Which example is most clearly dehumanizing?
Choose one answer.
Reducing people to numbers and animals denies their humanity. The other options are ordinary, respectful acts.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “dehumanizing”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.