Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive & intransitive verb To make or become brutal.
from The Century Dictionary.
- See
embrute .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To sink to the state of a brute.
- transitive verb To degrade to the state of a brute; to make brutal.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To make
brutal - verb To degrade to the state of a
brute
Etymologies
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Examples
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God gave them as men and encourage and assist them to become all He has made them capable of being, or whether we will continue wickedly to deny them the privileges we enjoy, condemn them to degradation, enslave, and imbrute them.
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Does it follow, that to enslave and imbrute him is either just or wise?
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But the tendency of life in the open air is to make the soul imbody and imbrute, and after a while one begins to think scholarship a disease, or, at any rate, a bad habit; and the Scythian nomad, or, if you choose, the Texan cowboy, seems to be the normal, healthy type.
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Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
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Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
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As thou hast asked me to testify respecting the physical condition of the slaves merely, I say nothing of the awful neglect of their minds and souls and the systematic effort to imbrute them.
American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses 1839
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Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
Walden Henry David Thoreau 1839
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I care, as you know, nothing for them, nor only that, abhor them for their power to imbrute the people accustomed to their spectacles more and more.
Zenobia or, the Fall of Palmyra William Ware 1824
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_minds and souls_ and the systematic effort to imbrute them.
The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 3 of 4 American Anti-Slavery Society
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_minds and souls_ and the systematic effort to imbrute them.
The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus American Anti-Slavery Society
madmouth commented on the word imbrute
"At present, man applies to nature but half his force. He works on the world with his understanding alone. He lives in it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage. "
-except from Ch. VII of Emerson's Nature (not a font of enlightenment so much as quaint phrasing)
July 31, 2009