Definition of "debauch"
debauch
noun
plural debauches
An individual act of debauchery.
Quotations
I rose by candle-light, and consumed, in the intensest application, the hours which every other individual of our party wasted in enervating slumbers, from the hesternal dissipation or debauch.
1828, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], chapter XX, in Pelham; or, The Adventures of a Gentleman. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], page 196
Quotations
The flowers, oppressive to the eyes, blazed with not a petal stirring, in a debauch of sun.
1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers; republished as chapter 2, in Burmese Days (ebook no. 0200051h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, November 2015
[T]here were always the gay and silly sensual young girls that Yossarian had found and brought there and those that the sleepy enlisted men returning to Pianosa after their own exhausting seven-day debauch had brought there.
1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, chapter 13, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster
verb
third-person singular simple present debauches, present participle debauching, simple past and past participle debauched
(transitive) To debase (something); to lower the value of (something).
Quotations
Those who with nine months toil had spoil’d a Play,In hopes of Eating at a full Third day,Justly despairing longer to sustainA craving Stomach from an empty Brain,Have left Stage-Practice, chang’d their old Vocations,Atoning for bad Plays, with worse Translations,And like old Sternhold with laborious spite,Burlesque what nobler Muses better write:Thus while they for their Causes only seemTo change the Channel, they corrupt the Stream.So breaking Vintners to increase their Wine,With nauseous Drugs debauch the generous Vine:So barren Gipsies for recruit are said,With Strangers Issue to maintain the Trade;But lest the fair Bantling should be known,A daubing Walnut makes him all their own.
1685, Matthew Prior, “A Satyr on the modern Translators”, in H. Bunker Wright, Monroe K. Spears, editors, The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, Second edition, volume I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, published 1971, page 19
[S]aving of all kinds is pointless when interest is microscopic and state-sponsored inflation is debauching the currency.
2014 March 23, Peter Hitchens, “We're being dragged into a new Cold War by a puffed-up bullfrog (and I don't mean President Putin)”, in Peter Hitchens's Blog at The Mail on Sunday (UK)