Demean vs Detract - What's the difference?
demean | detract |
To debase; to lower; to degrade.
* Thackeray
To humble, humble oneself; to humiliate.
To mortify.
To manage; to conduct; to treat.
* Milton
To conduct; to behave; to comport; followed by the reflexive pronoun.
* Shakespeare
* Clarendon
(archaic) Management; treatment.
* Spenser
(archaic) Behavior; conduct; bearing; demeanor.
* 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , V.5:
*:‘When thou hast all this doen, then bring me newes / Of his demeane […].’
* West
To take away; to withdraw or remove.
*{{quote-news
, year=2012
, date=May 27
, author=Nathan Rabin
, title=TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “New Kid On The Block” (season 4, episode 8; originally aired 11/12/1992)
, work=The Onion AV Club
To take credit or reputation from; to defame or decry.
* Drayton
As verbs the difference between demean and detract
is that demean is to debase; to lower; to degrade or demean can be to manage; to conduct; to treat while detract is to take away; to withdraw or remove.As a noun demean
is (archaic) management; treatment or demean can be demesne.demean
English
Etymology 1
(1595) From . Compare English (m).Verb
(en verb)- Her son would demean himself by a marriage with an artist's daughter.
Synonyms
* debase * lower * degradeEtymology 2
From (etyl) .Verb
(en verb)- [Our] clergy have with violence demeaned the matter.
- They have demeaned themselves / Like men born to renown by life or death.
- They answered that they should demean themselves according to their instructions.
Noun
- vile demean and usage bad
- with grave demean and solemn vanity
Etymology 3
Var. of demesne.Anagrams
* * *detract
English
Verb
(en verb)citation, page= , passage=The Conan O’Brien-penned half-hour has the capacity to rip our collective hearts out the way the cute, funny bad girl next door does to Bart when she reveals that her new boyfriend is Jimbo Jones, but the show keeps shying away from genuine emotion in favor of jokes that, while overwhelmingly funny, detract from the poignancy and the emotional intimacy of the episode.}}
- That calumnious critic / Detracting what laboriously we do.