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Dignity vs Debasement - What's the difference?

dignity | debasement |

As nouns the difference between dignity and debasement

is that dignity is a quality or state worthy of esteem and respect while debasement is the act of debasing or the state of being debased; a lowering, especially in character or quality.

dignity

English

(wikipedia dignity)

Noun

(dignities)
  • A quality or state worthy of esteem and respect.
  • * 1752 , (Henry Fielding), , I. viii
    • He uttered this ... with great majesty, or, as he called it, dignity .
  • * 1981 , African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights , art. 5
    • Every individual shall have the right to the respect of the dignity inherent in a human being.
  • * 2008 , Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) [Switzerland]
    • 'The dignity' of living beings with regard to plants: Moral consideration of plants for their own sake', 3: ... the ECNH has been expected to make proposals from an ethical perspective to concretise the constitutional term ' dignity of living beings with regard to plants. Dignity of Plants
  • Decorum, formality, stateliness.
  • * 1934 , Aldous Huxley, "Puerto Barrios", in Beyond the Mexique Bay :
    • Official DIGNITY tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held.Columbia World of Quotations 1996.
  • High office, rank, or station.
  • * 1781 , Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , F. III. 231:
    • He ... distributed the civil and military dignities among his favourites and followers.
  • * Macaulay
    • And the king said, What honour and dignity hath been done to Mordecai for this?
  • One holding high rank; a dignitary.
  • * Bible, Jude 8.
    • These filthy dreamers speak evil of dignities .
  • (obsolete) Fundamental principle; axiom; maxim.
  • * Sir Thomas Browne
    • Sciences concluding from dignities , and principles known by themselves.

    Synonyms

    * worth * worthiness

    Coordinate terms

    * augustness, humanness, nobility, majesty, grandeur, glory, superiority, wonderfulness

    Related terms

    * deign * dignified * dignify

    See also

    * affirmation * integrity * self-respect * self-esteem * self-worth

    References

    * *

    Anagrams

    *

    debasement

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The act of debasing or the state of being debased; a lowering, especially in character or quality.
  • * 1832 , , "Bon Bon":
    • His large water-dog was acquainted with the fact, and upon the approach of his master, betrayed his sense of inferiority by a sanctity of deportment, a debasement of the ears, and a dropping of the lower jaw not altogether unworthy of a dog.
  • * 1912 , , The Reef , ch. 33:
    • She had given herself to Darrow, and concealed the episode from Owen Leath, with no more apparent sense of debasement than the vulgarest of adventuresses.
  • * 2009 , Gilbert Cruz, " The Many Faces of Addiction (Book review of America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life'' by Benoit Denizet-Lewis)," ''Time , 12 Jan.:
    • There's something ugly and fascinating about reading such intimate tales of debasement and depression and failure and self-doubt.
  • The lowering of the value of a currency by reducing the amount of valuable metal in the coins.

    • Translations

    (The act of debasing or the state of being debased) (trans-mid) (trans-bottom) (The lowering of the value of a currency by reducing the amount of valuable metal in the coins) * German: (trans-mid) * Spanish: (trans-bottom)