Degrade

Don't degrade yourself by telling such a lie.

Batteries degrade over time.

Systems in which the rules are based on usage, such as languages or customary law, are condemned to become absurd, cumbersome and contradictory, since every time a small error slips into one of their usages, it is integrated into the rules, by definition, for eternity. The more users are ignorant, the more systems degrade rapidly. English, poorly used by millions of people, natives or not, for centuries, is an example of the degradation of a system at terminal stage, no longer presenting any logic, neither in its syntax, nor its grammar, nor its vocabulary or its pronunciation. Similarly, with customary rights becoming too cumbersome and incomprehensible, the states which rely on them tend to switch to prescriptive law.

I do not degrade you. I purify you.

You are completely beautiful. Your body is nothing perverse but art and I will never corrupt nor degrade it by presenting it in a sexual manner.

Ambassador-at-Large Nathan Sales, the U.S. coordinator for counterterrorism, recently visited Mozambique and South Africa to see how the United States can help “contain, degrade and defeat” the growing movement.

The technical infrastructure had started to degrade quite a bit.

After years of disrepair, the building had begun to degrade.

It's sad to see a human being degrade himself to such a point. What a shame!

Fred degrades himself by his behaviour.