debase
Debasement of women in pornographic magazines and movies has steadily increased.
A strong currency helps you to plan for a future without a potential debasement of your money.
They criticize the music as a form of cultural debasement.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Deteriorating and making worse
add
admin
aggravate
backslide
be downhillidiom
debase
deterioration
devaluation
devalue
disintegrate
dog
downgrade
regress
regression
regressive
regressively
retrograde
wear thinidiom
worse
worsen

Examples of debasement

debasement
One group that disliked debasements included the guild members, shopkeepers, small merchants, and wage-earning artisans.
Of the two coinages we commonly exchange and which are liable to debasement, language is far more damaging than money.
The persistence of debasements throughout the medieval and early modern periods suggests that these interventions could not simply be futile efforts.
For example, merchants sometimes preferred debasements to increased taxation when the government faced fiscal difficulties.
If the government perceived these costs to be lower than the expected fiscal benefits, then a debasement or a series of debasements could be adopted.
Yet another cost was the adverse implications of debasements for the ability of the state to borrow domestically.
At the same time, however, there existed significant economic and political constraints on the state's ability to take advantage of debasements.
Even if a social group did not always benefit from debasements and inflation, it could still prefer debasements to additional taxation.
In the short term, debasements provided relief from shortages of specie and coinage in circulation by increasing the nominal value of the coinage in circulation.
In other words, debasements generated an initial surge in revenues, followed by a decline in real terms due to the inflation they created.
As a result, debasements were frequently used as an alternative to additional taxation.
On the other side were social groups who stood to lose from debasements and the accompanying inflation and therefore opposed them.
At the same time, however, there were significant economic and political constraints on the state's ability to take advantage of debasements.
Indeed, the debasement of fringe is part of what makes it interesting and significant.
Prices almost always rose in the aftermath of debasements because a debasement typically increased the nominal value of coinage in circulation.
See all examples of debasement
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