Definition of "abase" []

• To lower in rank, prestige, or esteem. See Synonyms at degrade. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Coleridge was evidently one of those people who abase themselves excessively in the hope of never having to hear their faults expressed on the lips of others."
• "What would possess anyone to take such blessings and abase them with dollar signs?"
• "Where the people are Catholic and submissive to the law of God, as declared and applied by the vicar of Christ and supreme pastor of the church, democracy may be a good form of government; but combined with Protestantism or infidelity in the people, its inevitable tendency is to lower the standard of morality, to enfeeble intellect, to abase character, and to retard civilization, as even our short American experience amply proves."