abase
Verb
Verb Forms: abased, abasing, abases
- To lower in rank, prestige, or esteem; to humiliate.
- cause to feel shame; hurt the pride of
- To lower, as in condition in life, office, rank, etc., so as to cause pain or hurt feelings; to degrade, to depress, to humble, to humiliate.
- To lower physically; to depress; to cast or throw down; to stoop.
- To lower in value, in particular by altering the content of alloys in coins; to debase.
Examples
- He used a triple-word score to abase his opponent’s seemingly insurmountable lead.
- to abase the eye
Origin / Etymology
From Late Middle English abaishen, abashen, abaisse, abassen, abesse, abessen (“to be upset; to embarrass; to surprise; to confound; to bend down, stoop; to abase, degrade, disgrace”), from Middle French abaisser, from Old French abaissier, abessier (“to prostrate oneself; to lower, reduce”) (also compare Old French esbahir (“to amaze”), Vulgar Latin abbassiāre (“to lower”)), from a- (prefix indicating movement towards something) (from Latin ad (“toward, to”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂éd (“at, to”)) + baissier (“to lower”) (from Medieval Latin bassus (“short of stature, low; base”), possibly from Ancient Greek βᾰ́σῐς (bắsĭs, “foot; base, foundation”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷem- (“to step”)). The spelling of the English word has been influenced by base, thus ostensibly analyzable as a- (“towards”) + base.
There exist verb cognates in galloromance languages such as Catalan abaixar (“lower; abase”) and Occitan abaissar, and similar word construction in other romance languages as Spanish abajo (“down, downstairs; below”).
Synonyms
chagrin, humble, humiliate, mortify, bring down, degrade, demean, depress, discredit, disgrace, dishonor, downgrade, lower, reduce, sink
Scrabble Score: 7
abase: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordabase: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
abase: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary