Demean vs Diminish - What's the difference?
demean | diminish |
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 make smaller.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-12-14
, author=Simon Jenkins, authorlink=Simon Jenkins, volume=188, issue=2, page=23
, date=2012-12-21, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= To become smaller.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= To lessen the authority or dignity of; to put down; to degrade; to abase; to weaken.
* Robynson (More's Utopia)
* Bible, Ezekiel xxix. 15
* Milton
To taper.
To disappear gradually.
To take away; to subtract.
* Bible, Deuteronomy iv. 2
(music) To reduce a perfect or minor interval by a semitone.
As verbs the difference between demean and diminish
is that demean is to debase; to lower; to degrade while diminish is to make smaller.As a noun demean
is management; treatment.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
* * *diminish
English
Verb
(es)We mustn't overreact to North Korea boys' toys, passage=The threat of terrorism to the British lies in the overreaction to it of British governments. Each one in turn clicks up the ratchet of surveillance, intrusion and security. Each one diminishes liberty.}}
Old soldiers?, passage=Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine.
- This doth nothing diminish their opinion.
- I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations.
- O thou at whose sight all the stars / Hide their diminished heads.
- Neither shall ye diminish aught from it.