Literary notes about denigrate (AI summary)
The term "denigrate" is employed in literature to convey a range of critical or diminishing attitudes toward people, ideas, or cultural artifacts. At times it functions to express explicit contempt or prejudice, as when one group seeks to dehumanize another [1] or when a notable character’s reputation is undermined [2]. In more neutral contexts, the word serves to downplay the significance of important documents or contributions [3, 4] while also appearing in stylistic criticisms of subject matter, where the inherent negativity of the depiction is both challenged and highlighted [5, 6, 7]. Its semantic field even extends into discussions of tarnishing or maligning, aligning it with terms such as "blacken" and "malign" [8, 9].
- White men denigrate and black men are like beasts.
— from Juju by Murray Leinster - Most of these legends denigrate his character, and make him appear cruel, wilful, and false.
— from The Cathedrals of Northern Spain Their History and Their Architecture; Together with Much of Interest Concerning the Bishops, Rulers and Other Personages Identified with Them by Charles Rudy - This is not to denigrate the importance of these documents.
— from Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 by Morris J. MacGregor - But the doctor-gods tended to belittle and denigrate nurses.
— from How and When to Be Your Own Doctor by Isabel A. Moser - I shall neither denigrate nor flatter, I shall be truthful.
— from The Memoirs of General Baron de Marbot by Marbot, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine-Marcelin, baron de - Whatever the intentions of the poet, it seems to be the property of the Hudibrastic couplet inevitably to denigrate its subject.
— from Aesop Dress'd; Or, A Collection of Fables Writ in Familiar Verse by Bernard Mandeville - But each is too much of a man, too noble, too chivalrous, to denigrate the other.”
— from The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2 by Cook, Edward Tyas, Sir - blacken , v. darken , denigrate; begrime, besmirch, tarnish , discolor; defame , malign.
— from Putnam's Word Book A Practical Aid in Expressing Ideas Through the Use of an Exact and Varied Vocabulary by Louis A. (Louis Andrew) Flemming - blacken, infuscate[obs3], denigrate; blot, blotch; smutch[obs3]; smirch; darken &c. 421.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget
