Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of deprecate.
  • adjective In manner that deprecates; insulting; belittling.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective tending to diminish or disparage

Etymologies

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Examples

  • It is ironic how the American Art World puts everything outside itself in deprecating categories, especially Ethnic Art, yet what could be more ethnic than it?

    July 2008 2008

  • You will also recall deprecating my lack of rigour in writing comments on a blog without what might be considered the apparatus appropriate to a scholarly monograph (that is, citations for every borrowing or quote).

    On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2009

  • Their humor was either cruel or crude, and never self-deprecating, which is the true test - if you can't make fun of yourself, you sure as hell can't make fun of someone else.

    February 2004 2004

  • Fresh Prince of Bellaire, including the exact same wardrobe and throw in some dope self deprecating rhymes with a thumping beat and I'm sold.

    Hypebeast 2008

  • Do you suppose Kleinzahler actually wrote "The humor is deadpan, ironical, playfully depreciating" or is that last word a mistranscription of "deprecating"?

    languagehat.com: NO USE WHATEVER. 2005

  • "I suppose I have been a very bad boy," said he, with a kind of deprecating smile, as though he did not believe more than one half he said.

    In School and Out or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. Oliver Optic 1859

  • If I were in a better frame of mine I could probably be far more self deprecating.

    Confessions of a literary fraud « Write Anything 2009

  • Very few of us find it easy to talk about ourselves in anything other than an aw shucks, self-deprecating way.

    Hiding Behind Your Words « Write Anything 2010

  • In that formula, the first 85 or 90 percent of your remarks are supposed to be funny -- biting, a little bipartisan, and significantly self-deprecating.

    Sen. Chris Coons: The Alternate Ending to My Congressional Correspondents Dinner Speech Sen. Chris Coons 2011

  • There was just something about that line, and I suppose the self-deprecating sense of humor that he portrayed; and I thought there's my voice.

    An interview with Michael Robotham 2010

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