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Debauch

verb
(past & past part. debauched; pres. part. debauching)
1.
Corrupt morally or by intemperance or sensuality.  Synonyms: corrupt, debase, demoralise, demoralize, deprave, misdirect, pervert, profane, subvert, vitiate.  "Socrates was accused of corrupting young men" , "Do school counselors subvert young children?" , "Corrupt the morals"



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"Debauch" Quotes from Famous Books



... opened by a young man in a rich but torn and soiled eighteenth-century costume, and he looked, in the half-light of the entrance, as though he was just recovering from a sustained debauch. The young man stared haughtily in silence. Only after an appreciable hesitation did George see through the disguise and recover himself sufficiently to ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... such gigantesque idiocy is the word "mafficking." The slaves of that saturnalia were not only painting the town red; they thought that they were painting the map red—that they were painting the world red. But, indeed, this Imperial debauch has in it something worse than the mere larkiness which is my present topic; it has an element of real self-flattery and of sin. The Jingo who wants to admire himself is worse than the blackguard who ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... as business to these traffickers to drug, to make drunken, to deceive, to ensnare or to debauch by force the innocent, the confiding, the thoughtless, the weak. Whether for the ancient temple of Venus at Corinth or for the dens of shame in the white slave market of Chicago or Paris, beautiful victims who will earn ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... your cast of morals, Sir John: you are weary of merry folly—the churchmen call it vice—and long for a little serious crime. A murder, now, or a massacre, would enhance the flavour of debauch, as the taste of the olive gives zest to wine. But my worst acts are but merry malice: I have no relish for the bloody trade, and abhor to see or hear of its being acted even on the meanest caitiff. Should I ever fill the throne, I suppose, like my father ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... debauch is the logical culmination of the anti-Paganism and backworldism launched two hundred centuries back. The Christian ethic, to the bewildered chagrin of its advocates, has triumphed. Not a triumph this time that offers ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... sponsors of both champions went, as was their duty, to see that they were duly armed and prepared for combat. The Archduke of Austria was in no hurry to perform this part of the ceremony, having had rather an unusually severe debauch upon wine of Shiraz the preceding evening. But the Grand Master of the Temple, more deeply concerned in the event of the combat, was early before the tent of Conrade of Montserrat. To his great surprise, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... she's a Fop, my Lady Fancy, and ever was so, an idle conceited she Fop; and has Vanity and Tongue enough to debauch any Nation under civil Government: but, Patience, thou art a Virtue, and Affliction will come.—Ah, I'm very sick, alas, I have not long to dwell amongst the Wicked, Oh, oh.—Roger, is ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... uncles, who had seen the world, were ever ready to bolster the matter through, and as they were brawny, broad-shouldered warriors, and veterans in brawl as well as debauch, they had great sway with the multitude. If any one pretended to assert the innocence of the duchess, they interrupted him with a loud ha! ha! of derision. "A pretty story, truly," would they cry, "about a wolf and a dragon, and a young widow rescued in the dark by a sturdy varlet ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... strange adventures on the sea; but why did a certain old volume of Robinson Crusoe persistently come before him? He saw the rubbed and yellowed page, the vignette of Robinson in his hammock surrounded by drunken sailors, and above it the inscription, "And in a night of debauch I ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... his way home one Saturday night from such a rudimentary debauch at Hampton that his Adventure ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune

... Detected two gross blunders though, which I have ordered for cancel. Supped (for a wonder) with Colin Mackenzie and a bachelor party. Mr. Williams[541] was there, whose extensive information, learning, and lively talent makes him always pleasant company. Up till twelve—a debauch ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... were preserved for the moment, but what would happen should the wolves succeed in pulling down and devouring the horse? They would, to a certainty, return and attack us, as we had feared; or, even if they did not, the Indians would be recovering from their debauch. I could only hope that they had not consumed all the liquor, and that the first to awaken would take another pull at the bottles. In spite of our fearful position, a drowsiness began to steal over me, produced perhaps by exhaustion. I even now do not like to ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston

... done so when we became aware of a movement among the enemy. So busily occupied had they been in their debauch that they had not noticed the change in the weather, or the advantage which had been taken of it to put the ship under way. As it was, they might have even allowed that to pass, supposing it only brought them nearer to Yarmouth Roads, when one of the old salts in their number pronounced that ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... Leighton, "those things are merely the progeny of art. Art itself is work, and its chief end is expression with repression. Remember that—with repression. Many an artist has missed greatness by mistaking license for originality and producing debauch. I don't want you to do that. I want you to stay here by yourself for a while and work; not with your hands, necessarily, but with your mind. Get your perspective of life now. Most of the pathetic 'what-might-have-beens' in the lives of ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... address, having looked up and gathered in the B-flat trombonist, Average Jones led the way. The pair lurked in the neighborhood of the ramshackle house watching the entrance, until toward evening, as the door opened to let out a tremulous wreck of a man, palsied with debauch, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... the end and design of their works. A wanton Sappho, or Anacreon, among the ancients, never had the same applause, as a Pindar, or Alexis; nor in the judgment of Horace did they deserve it. In the opinion of all posterity, a lewd and debauch'd Ovid, did justly submit to the worth of a Virgil; and, in future ages, a Dryden will never be compared to Milton. In all times, and in all places of the world, the moral poets have been ever the greatest; and as much superior to others in wit, as in ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... the king, sincerely attentive to the words of the All-wise, conceived a distaste for the world's glitter and was dissatisfied with the pleasures of royalty, even as one avoids a drunken elephant, or returns to right reason after a debauch. Then all the heretical teachers, seeing that the king was well affected to Buddha, besought the king, with one voice, to call on Buddha to exhibit his miraculous gifts. Then the king addressed the lord of the world: "I pray ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... and amongst much valuable knowledge that he had amassed, was a skill in dealing with wounds and a wide understanding of the ways to go about healing them. This knowledge made him realize how unwise at such a season was Gregory's debauch, and sorrowfully did he wag his head over his master's condition ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... his feet. There was a queer singing in his ears. The feast seemed to have turned to a sickly debauch. All that pinnacle of success seemed to have fallen away. The faces of his guests, even, as they looked at him, seemed to his conscience to be expressing one thing, and one thing only—that same ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... reign of Henry IV.—the first king of the house of Bourbon, and the first king of the sixteenth century with a will of his own and the courage to assert it—begins a period of revelling, debauch, and the most depraved immorality. Three mistresses in turn ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... evasion in the old days, who thought that sweet words can stop bullets, whose programme in 1863 called for a cessation of hostilities and a general convention of all the States, and who promised as the speedy result of a debauch of talk a carnival of bright eyes glistening with the tears of revived affection. With these strange people in 1863 there combined a number of different types: the still stranger, still less creditable visionary, of whom much hereafter; the avowed friends of the principle ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... a pate, and a dozen bottles of good wine. I trust to you. I know you are a connoisseur; besides, sent by you, it will seem like a guardian's attention. Bought by me, it would seem like a pupil's debauch; and I have my provincial reputation to keep ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... what the world seeks through desert and wild we have within our threshold;—a stalwart laboring force, suited to the semi-tropics; if, deaf to the voice of the Zeitgeist, we refuse to use and develop these men, we risk poverty and loss. If, on the other hand, seized by the brutal afterthought, we debauch the race thus caught in our talons, selfishly sucking their blood and brains in the future as in the past, what shall save us from national decadence? Only that saner selfishness which, Education teaches men, can find the rights of all in the whirl ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... ever present to the tender mind. The stranger entered perhaps a splendid dwelling, and found all the advantages of opulence, except what money could not procure—a comely and honest-hearted woman servant. The eye at length became more familiar with lineaments bloated or rigid with passion and debauch, and the ear accustomed to the endless vicissitudes of the servants' hall, which discharged and received an endless succession of the same debased, despised, and unhappily despicable beings. The writer has ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... elm-bark tent, and in the foremost I recognized the hideous Rupe Falardeau, Junior. This man carried in his hand a small tin pail full of whiskey. He was very drunk and dangerous, and greatly disgusted at the absence of the Iroquois men, with whom he had evidently laid himself out for a roaring debauch. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... is bad on our domestic industry. We almost need a musical protective system. Our good old society concerts have been much thrown out of joint. Few of them of late, as compared with former years, have paid. The dazzling novelties, that come trumpeted with all the cunning speculators' arts, debauch us somewhat from our wholesome, quiet love of pure, high music for its own sake, and lead the public into little short-lived fanaticisms about certain prima donnas, baritones, or tenors, and about music chiefly made to show off the singer, full of the commonplaces that he loves to make ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... and lounged heavily against the railing. His clothes were soiled and wrinkled, blue circles shadowed his eyes, which were of dull jet, the corners of his mouth drooped dejectedly, and his oily face, covered with red stubble, gave evidences of a prolonged debauch. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... of pleasure, lap of luxury; free living. indulgence; high living, wild living, inabstinence^, self- indulgence; voluptuousness &c adj.; epicurism, epicureanism; sybaritism; drug habit. dissipation; licentiousness &c adj.; debauchery; crapulence^. revels, revelry; debauch, carousal, jollification, drinking bout, wassail, saturnalia, orgies; excess, too much. Circean cup. [drugs of abuse: list] bhang, hashish, marijuana, pot [Coll.], hemp [Coll.], grass [Coll.]; opium, cocaine, morphine, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... rules of this kind, would be perpetually wandering into a thousand indecencies and irregularities in behavior; and in their ordinary conversation, fall into the same boisterous familiarities that one observeth amongst them when a debauch hath quite taken away the use of their reason. In other instances, it is odd to consider, that for want of common discretion, the very end of good breeding is wholly perverted; and civility, intended ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... town of Mansoul, because, as I said, his words did shake the whole town; they were like the rattling thunder, and also like thunder-claps. Since, therefore, the giant could not make him wholly his own, what doth he do but studies all that he could to debauch the old gentleman, and by debauchery to stupefy his mind, and more harden his heart in the ways of vanity. And as he attempted, so he accomplished his design: he debauched the man, and by little and little so drew him into sin and wickedness, that at last he was not only debauched, ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... various descriptions. Bits of artificial flowers are strewn about the carpet, a shawl is seen thrown over one chair, a mantle over another; the light is half shut off-everything bears evidence of the gaieties of luxurious life, the sumptuous revel and the debauch. The gilded mirrors reflect but two faces, both hectic and moody of dissipation. George Mullholland and Mr. Snivel face each other, at a pier-table. Before them are several half filled bottles, from one of which ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... a diplomatic silence. He, too, was long and lean. He had eyes of the most innocent and tender blue imaginable in a countenance seamed and scarred by protracted debauch, disease, abuse. It was said of him that if all the liquor he had consumed were turned loose on the mountain it would sweep Greenstream village to the farther ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... duplicity and concealed hostilities. They, however, pretended to be friends; and the treaty of Brundusium, celebrated by Virgil, would seem to indicate that the world was now to enjoy the peace it craved. After a debauch, Antonius left Rome for the East, and Octavius for Gaul, each with a view of military conquests. Antonius, with his new wife, had seemingly forgotten Cleopatra, and devoted himself to the duties ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... totter to its fall; perish &c. 162; die &c. 360. [Render less good] deteriorate; weaken &c. 160; put back, set back; taint, infect, contaminate, poison, empoison[obs3], envenom, canker, corrupt, exulcerate|, pollute, vitiate, inquinate|; debase, embase|; denaturalize, denature, leaven; deflower, debauch, defile, deprave, degrade; ulcerate; stain &c. (dirt) 653; discolor; alloy, adulterate, sophisticate, tamper with, prejudice. pervert, prostitute, demoralize, brutalize; render vicious &c. 945. embitter, acerbate, exacerbate, aggravate. injure, impair, labefy[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the plateau and in the depth of the rainy and bitter air, on the ghastly morrow of this debauch of slaughter, there is a head planted in the ground, a wet and bloodless head, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... was part of my Hardy debauch. A week or two earlier I had been reading what I think was his first book, written a quarter of a century before The Trumpet Major. I refer to Desperate Remedies; with all its faults, an extraordinarily ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... of the Greek world was just this, and it perished at last of the same disease which we already notice at Troy. It fell to a worship of the sensuous in life and art, and so lost its soul in a grand debauch. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... every nation, they scoured the seas, disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in for a debauch at some outlying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants by their lavishness, and ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... down strong passions, malice, and ill-will. His dress was of threadbare velveteen—a faded, rusty, whitened black, like the ashes of a pipe or a coal fire after a day's extinction; discoloured with the soils of many a stale debauch, and reeking yet with pot-house odours. In lieu of buckles at his knees, he wore unequal loops of packthread; and in his grimy hands he held a knotted stick, the knob of which was carved into a rough likeness ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... your own well-fed natural exuberance. You cannot imagine what alcohol was to an underfed poor woman. I had carefully arranged my little savings so that I could get drunk, as we called it, once a week; and my only pleasure was looking forward to that poor little debauch. That is what saved me from suicide. I could not bear to miss my next carouse. But when I stopped working, and lived on my pension, the fatigue of my life's drudgery began to wear off, because, you see, I was not really old. I recuperated. I looked younger and younger. And at last I was rested ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... nephew we are told that the marriage of Dante and Gemma Donati, in Twelve Hundred and Ninety-two, when Dante was twenty-seven, was a little matter arranged by the friends of both parties. Dante was dreamy, melancholy and unreliable: marriage would sober his poetic debauch and cause him to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... of a book-notice can express our obligations to Mr. Ellison and those few of his countrymen who have publicly rebuked the noisy bitterness of writers striving, with too much success, to debauch the sentiment of England. Most dear to us is an occasional lull in that storm of insolence and mendacity designed to embarrass the Government of the United States in the august and solemn championship of human liberty committed to its charge. And let it be remarked that our expectations of English ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... remarked elsewhere in this volume, the Strindbergs and Wildes and Gorkis are having their day in Germany just now, and beneath this again is this large distribution of the lawless and sooty literature, frankly intended as a debauch for the gutter-snipe and his consort. Even the coarse, and in no line squeamish, Rabelais wrote that, "Science sans conscience n'est que ruine ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... poverty, the poet's constant crime, Compell'd thee, all unfit, to trade in rhyme, 90 Had not romantic notions turn'd thy head, Hadst thou not valued honour more than bread; Had Interest, pliant Interest, been thy guide, And had not Prudence been debauch'd by Pride, In Flattery's stream thou wouldst have dipp'd thy pen, Applied to great and not to honest men; Nor should conviction have seduced thy heart To take the weaker, though the better part. What ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... put in Corporal Macan, who had lately regained his stripes after a long spell of good behaviour that atoned for his debauch at the Cape which lost him his rank; the Irishman now being engaged in serving the bow gun of the gunboat with the utmost deliberation, taking steady aim with each shot which he pitched into the cavalier of the nearest battery and knocking the gun into "smithereens" at his third attempt, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... As I states, I reeverses this practitioner an' heads him t'other way. Wolfville is the home of friendly confidence; the throne of yoonity an' fraternal peace. It must not be jeopardised. We-all don't want to incur no resks by abandonin' ourse'fs to real shore-enough law. It would debauch us: we'd get plumb locoed an' take to racin' wild an' cimarron up an' down the range, an' no gent could foresee results. It's better than even money, that with the advent of a law sharp into our midst, historians of this hamlet would begin their last chapter. ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... this was all she possessed in the house. Then at last she saw him. The light dawned on a cold snowy morning of early March. O'Iwa rose, opened the amado, and started her day. About the fourth hour (9 A.M.) the sho[u]ji were pushed aside and Iemon entered. He looked as if fresh from a night's debauch. His garments were dirty and disordered. His face was sallow, the eyes deep set and weary, his manner listless. O'Iwa gave him the only cushion in the room. Seated before the hibachi (brazier) after some time he said—"A ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... means, Sir. The genteelest characters are often the most immoral. Does not Lord Chesterfield give precepts for uniting wickedness and the graces? A man, indeed, is not genteel when he gets drunk; but most vices may be committed very genteelly: a man may debauch his friend's wife genteely: he may cheat at cards genteelly.' HICKY. 'I do not think that is genteel.' BOSWELL. 'Sir, it may not be like a gentleman, but it may be genteel.' JOHNSON. 'You are meaning two different things. One means exteriour grace; the other honour. It is certain that a man may ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... symbol more sacred than the American flag. That was the bread and wine which represented the body and blood of the Saviour of mankind; adding, that a man who would use an appeal to the flag in aid of the subjugation of an unwilling people, would be capable of using the sacramental wine for a debauch. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... pleasures of Paris, and a solace for his discouragement. A bottle of Bordeaux, oysters from Ostend, a dish of fish, a partridge, a dish of macaroni and dessert,—this was the ne plus ultra of his desire. He enjoyed this little debauch, studying the while how to give the Marquise d'Espard proof of his wit, and redeem the shabbiness of his grotesque accoutrements by the display of intellectual riches. The total of the bill drew him down from these ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... by the keeper of the den of iniquity as he feared he would be deprived of his evil gains, and that night he rewarded them with unlimited free drinks until they drowned their consciences in a prolonged debauch. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... August. c. 42. The utmost debauch of the emperor himself, in his favorite wine of Rhaetia, never exceeded a sextarius, (an English pint.) Id. c. 77. Torrentius ad loc. and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... still, apparently, all fast asleep, overcome by their debauch of the previous day and night. Doyle, who wisely carried his musket and pistols, went on without hesitation. How he found out Pullingo's sleeping-place I do not know, as there was nothing to distinguish ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... enough and if the debauch is continued long enough, it may end in complete paralysis of the vital functions ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... squandered the fortune he had received, and sought to retrieve his affairs by a second marriage; but, having retired after a night of drunken debauch, he was found dead in the morning. He was called a good master; for he fed and clothed his slaves better than most masters, and the lash was not heard on his plantation so frequently as on many others. Had it not been for slavery, ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... imagination, drink-maddened to lunacy, was delighted with the suggestion. And yet, the older, more morbid drinkers, more jaded with life and more disillusioned, who kill themselves, do so usually after a long debauch, when their nerves and brains are ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... refer to the most shameful epochs of Roman history to find any emperor whose life was as scandalous as his own; his cabinet was found after his death to be filled with valuable stuffs, rings, fans, trinkets, and even a quantity of rouge. These traces of debauch made the empress blush when she visited them with the new emperor. "My son," said she, "you have before you the sad proof of your father's disorderly life, and of my long afflictions: remember nothing of them except my forgiveness and his virtues. Imitate his ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... state for his plots, and thought that here was a chance offered to do his purpose. So he took out of his bosom the stakes he has long ago prepared, and went into the building, where the ground lay covered with the bodies of the nobles wheezing off their sleep and their debauch. Then, cutting away its support, he brought down the hanging his mother had knitted, which covered the inner as well as the outer walls of the hall. This he flung upon the snorers, and then applying the crooked stakes, he knotted and bound them up in such insoluble intricacy, that not ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... adoration of rum, quarrels over stolen goods; quarrels over drunken drabs; quarrels over all-fours; the scraping of fiddles from every public-house, the noise of singing, feasting, and dancing, and a never-ending, still-beginning debauch, all hushed and quiet—as birds cower in the hedge at sight of the kestrel—when the press-gang swept down the narrow streets and carried off the lads, unwilling to leave the girls and the grog, and put them aboard His Majesty's ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... of his infernal aid, And he's as certain ne'er to be betrayed. Through all the world they spread his vast command, And death's eternal empire is maintained. They rule so politicly and so well, As if they were Lords Justices of hell; Duly divided to debauch mankind, And plant infernal ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... unbosomed herself to the press correspondents, a few of whom, seeking sensation, as demanded by their papers, took her seriously and told tremendous tales of the brutal neglect of our sick and wounded boys in hospital, of doctors and nurses in wild debauch on the choice wines and liquors sent for the sole use of the sick and wounded by such patriotic societies as the P. D. A.'s, and hinting at other and worse debaucheries (which she blushed to name), and involved in which were prominent officers and ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... the waking sensations of their fellow-men, after a night's debauch; yet at the same time, I am not aware of any one having perfectly conveyed even a passing likeness to the mingled throng of sensations which crowd one's brain on such an occasion. The doubt of what has passed, by degrees yielding to the half-consciousness of the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... both Prudencia's little hands in earnest congratulation. As he did so, the door of Reinaldo's room opened, and the heir of the Iturbi y Moncadas stepped forth, gorgeous in black silk embroidered with gold. He had slept off the effects of the night's debauch, and cold water had restored his freshness. He kissed Prudencia's hand, his own to us, then bent ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... you, who has had the impudence to represent to your Lordships at your bar that Benares is in a flourishing condition, in defiance of the evidence which we have under his own hands, and who, in all the false papers that have been circulated to debauch the public opinion, has stated that we, the Commons, have given a false representation as to the state of the country ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... priests, who have rendered their women virtuous by treating them with kindness and humanity, there are another sect of religio-philosophical drones, called Fakiers, who contribute as much as they can to debauch the sex, under a pretence of superior sanctity. These hypocritical saints, like some of the ridiculous sects which formerly existed in Europe, wear no clothes; considering them only as proper appendages to sinners, who are ashamed, because they are sensible of guilt; while they, being free ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... and some native warriors) the party set out to seize the chief before he should awake. Day was not come, and it was a very bright moonlight morning, when they reached the hill-top where (in a house of palm-leaves) Timau was sleeping off his debauch. The assailants were fully exposed, the interior of the hut quite dark; the position far from sound. The gendarmes knelt with their pieces ready, and Captain Hart advanced alone. As he drew near the door he heard the snap of a gun cocking from within, and in sheer ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hifty one. Them Indians never can get off their high heels—not the full-breeds. But I tell you, Mr. Farwell, and you take it for truth, when Jerry begins to maudle about repentance, it's just before a—debauch. I know ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... the standpoint of honest, unprejudiced men no other conclusion can be derived but from your own statements you have endeavored personally and through subornation of others to debauch legislation, to distort facts, to create in the minds of investors a lack of confidence in men whom the public for many years have looked up to as the leaders ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... will be slow, but it will be sure. The religion of our day is supported by the worst, by the most dangerous people in society. I do not allude to murderers or burglars, or even to the little thieves. I mean those who debauch courts and legislatures and elections— those who make ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... Liza: she went back to work without a headache, and, except for a slight languor, feeling no worse for the previous day's debauch. As she worked on she began going over in her mind the events of the preceding day, and she found entwined in all her thoughts the burly person of Jim Blakeston. She saw him walking by her side in the Forest, presiding over the meals, playing ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... he took was necessarily a long one and the ride entirely sobered him, except for a crawling sensation in his brain, as though ants were swarming there, which always harassed him after a debauch. At such times he was more dangerous than when under the first influence of whiskey. It was close upon noon, and the silvery sagebrush was shimmering beneath the direct rays of the sun, when he rode his ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... that Jasper has run up to town, on December 23, and has saturated his system with a debauch of opium on the very eve of the day when he clearly means to kill Edwin. This was a most injudicious indulgence, in the circumstances. A maiden murder needs nerve! We know that "fiddlestrings was weakness to express the state of" Jasper's "nerves" on the day ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang

... all his strength and all his sweetness up into one ball'? I cannot remember Marvell's words.) So the critics have been saying to me; but I was never capable of—and surely never guilty of—such a debauch of production. At this rate his works will soon fill the habitable globe, and surely he was armed for better conflicts than these succinct sketches and flying leaves of verse? I look on, I admire, I rejoice for myself; but in a kind ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... doing it? Not for money. She could only be doing it from the nostalgia of adventurous debauch. She was the slave of her temperament, as the drunkard is the slave of his thirst. He had told her that he would be out of town for the week end, on committee business. He had distinctly told her that she must on no account expect him on the Monday night. And her temperament had ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... half-drunken men into a forced march, succeeded in overtaking Carson. At the first supply of water, they went into camp. A night of sleep soon set the brains of Young's trappers once more to rights. The next day the party, most of them sufficiently ashamed of their drunken debauch, commenced with vigor the homeward march. They continued nine days almost upon their former track, when outward bound. On the ninth day, they once more stood on the banks of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... whom we love, we should esteem them too, And not debauch that virtue which we woo. Yet, though you give my honour just offence, I'll take your kindness in the better sense; And, since you for my safety seem to fear, I, to return your bribe, should wish you here. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... regard, the first return he makes for your civilities is to make love to your wife, if she is handsome; if not, to your sister, or daughter, or niece. If he suffers a repulse from your wife, or attempts in vain to debauch your sister, or your daughter, or your niece, he will, rather than not play the traitor with his gallantry, make his addresses to your grandmother; and ten to one but in one shape or another he will find means to ruin the peace ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... and where each female boldly exposes just enough of her person to excite desire in the beholder. These girls dance in ordinary street costumes, and in many cases are paid by the proprietor for their services. It is a wild debauch, and needs but to be seen once, to be ever afterward remembered with disgust ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... cabbage. The men were oblivious of their wives as they gave the social passwords of Main Street, the orthodox opinions on weather, crops, and motor cars, then flung away restraint and gyrated in the debauch of shop-talk. Stroking his chin, drawling in the ecstasy of being erudite, Kennicott inquired, "Say, doctor, what success have you had with thyroid for treatment of pains ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory. Wilson sat down victorious. The house submerged him in tides of approving applause; friends swarmed to him and shook him by the hand and congratulated ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... returned. He placed the check book in its accustomed place in the desk, destroyed all evidence of the night's debauch and left a note on the desk saying: "My dear Rayder, I have been suddenly called home by the illness of my wife. Come to Saguache as soon as you can make ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds

... providing himself with powder and shot, and other necessary and indispensable articles, such as would have contributed to his own and his family's comfort, he has exhausted all his wealth for one debauch, which only weakens him, and renders him more helpless and destitute for the future. This wretchedness is accompanied by a depression of spirits, which must have a pernicious influence on his body, already weakened by disease, and which, at length, from the total want ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... long as the effect of the wine was upon him, had been angry with the master for his rebuke, now that its force was spent he became angry at himself for his debauch. He recalled the twenty-three farthings which he had gone through in one evening, and which would now take almost a fortnight's work to earn again. He was angry at the work which he would have to do for this purpose, at the wine which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... sifted to the bottom. For it is on this point that we discover behind the phantoms of the corrupt dramatists who are restrained by the censorship from debauching the stage, the reality of the corrupt managers and theatre proprietors who actually do debauch it without let or hindrance from the censorship. The whole case for giving control over theatres to local ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw

... up. The effects of his overnight debauch had been completely flung aside. His eyes, so like his father's, were wide, and his handsome face was alive with a sudden excitement. He flung ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... You traders are our ruin. But we will shut you out of the country yet. Mark my words. Those twenty-five licenses will be revoked before the season ends, and you will have to find other excuses to bring your rabble here to debauch our missions." ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... strangers, for the tavern had a certain clientele outside of which it had few customers and suspicion was rife at any invasion. "They are drinking wine, vermouth, and greenish opaline draughts of absinthe. Staggering in unnerved and stupefied from the previous night's debauch, they show few signs of vitality until four or five glasses of the absinthe have been drunk, and then they awaken; their eyes brighten and their tongues are loosened—the routine of play, smoke, and alcohol ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... intoxications of the most delicious wines of France, and the voluptuous vapor of perfumed India smoke, uniting the vivid satisfactions of Europe with the torpid blandishments of Asia, the great magician himself, chaste in the midst of dissoluteness, sober in the centre of debauch, vigilant in the lap of negligence and oblivion, attended with an eagle's eye the moment for thrusting in business, and at such times was able to carry without difficulty points of shameful enormity, which at other hours he would not so ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the musician at the end of it may be readily conceived. Meat and drink are supplied to him on the spot where he pays his laborious court to the Muses. The proceedings wind up with a saturnalia and a drunken debauch.[137] Among the Yaguas, an Indian tribe of the Upper Amazon, a girl at puberty is shut up for three months in a lonely hut in the forest, where her mother brings her food daily.[138] When a girl of the Peguenches tribe perceives ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... to my fair mistress. 'Twas a chance I saw you, lady, so intent was I On chiding hence these graceless serving-men, Who cannot break their fast at morning meals Without debauch and mis-timed riotings. This house hath been a scene of nothing else But atheist riot and profane excess, Since my old master ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... remark, as high praise, and let three hot cakes burn until their edges curled while he bragged of his skill as a maker of moonshine. Paw himself was red-eyed and loose-lipped from yesterday's debauch. Hank's whole face, especially in the region of his eyes, was puffed unbecomingly. Casey, squinting an angry eye at Hank and the cup of coffee, spared a thought from his own misery to acknowledge surprise that ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower

... qualms of a sympathy which he knew was undeserved. Bland Halliday had got a square deal—more than a square deal; for Sudden, Johnny knew, had paid him generously for repairing the plane while Johnny was sick. Bland had undoubtedly squandered the money in one long debauch, and there was no doubt in Johnny's mind of Bland's reason for missing his train. He was a bum by nature and he would double-cross his own mother, Johnny firmly believed. Yet, there was Johnny's boyish ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... loved her.' Conscience, which was overpowered and unheard amid the loud cries of desire, speaks. We find out the narrow limits of satisfaction. The satisfied appetite has no further driving power, but lies down to sleep off its debauch, and ceases to be a factor for the time. Inward discord, the schism between duty and inclination, sets up strife in the very sanctuary of the soul. We are dimly conscious of the evil done as robbing us of power to do right. We cannot pray, and would be glad to forget God. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... such as Lucian, had perhaps a right to be shocked by this architectural debauch, this beauty too crushing and too rich. A Carthage rhetorician, like Augustin, could feel at the sight of it nothing but the same irritated admiration and secret jealousy as the Emperor Constans felt when he visited his capital ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... Are you dumb? Are you blind? Do you dance and laugh, and hear and see not? The cry of death is in the air; they murder, burn, and maim us!" ("Oh—oh—" moaned the people swaying in their seats.) "When we cry they mock us; they ruin our women and debauch our children—what ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... wrote Forster in 1779; but the Berliners! Sociability and refined taste, he found, degenerated in them into sensuality, into libertinage (he might almost say voracity), freedom of wit and love of shining in shameless licence and unrestrained debauch of thought. The women in general were abandoned. An English diplomat, Sir John Harris, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, had the same impression: Berlin was a town where, if fortis might be translated by "honourable," you could say that there was ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... you learn to scout the gownsmen, cudgel the townsmen, kiss their wives, frighten their daughters, and debauch their maids but I? You were a mere tyro when I took you in hand; you did not so much as know how to throw in a knock down blow!'—'Why you ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... on the other hand, one should limit oneself to an aerated bread shop for a week or so, with the exception of an occasional tea in a literary household. All people fed mainly on scones become clever. And this regimen, with an occasional debauch upon macaroons, chocolate, and cheap champagne, and brisk daily walks from Oxford Circus, through Regent Street, Piccadilly, and the Green Park, to Westminster and back, should result in an animated ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... difficult journeys, one blanket and three kegs of rum, only remained, besides the poor and almost worn out clothing on our bodies." The sending of missionaries, to labor by the side of the miscreants who thus swindle and debauch the ignorant savage, is a mockery of the office, and a waste of the time of these valuable men. If the Indians traded within our states, with our regular traders, the same laws and the same public sentiment which protects us, would ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... called, out of all cry. But even where his alliteration is tempted to an excess, its prolonged echoes caress the ear like the fading and gathering reverberations of an Alpine horn, and one can find in his heart to forgive even such a debauch of initial ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... argued over three thousand miles of country, 'all these are excellent reasons for bringing in the Englishman. It is true that in his own country he is taught to shirk work, because kind, silly people fall over each other to help and debauch and amuse him. Here, General January will stiffen him up. Remittance-men are an affliction to every branch of the Family, but your manners and morals can't be so tender as to suffer from a few thousand of them among your six ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... second place Crossan wouldn't debauch the whole place by making the men drunk night after night on smuggled spirits. Why, only three weeks ago he spoke to me seriously about the glass of claret I drink at dinner. He did it quite respectfully and entirely for my good. I ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... not like other men. There are some who live almost entirely for the sake of making others happy, who find joy in seeing people content and satisfied. Mr. Fentolin is the reverse of this. He has but one craving in life: to see pain in others. To see a human being suffer is to him a debauch of happiness. A war which laid this country waste would fill him with a delight which you could never understand. There are no normal human beings like this. It is a disease in the man, a disease which came upon ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a half-breed dance. That is the literal meaning of the word. The practical translation, however, is often different. In reality it is a debauch—a frightful orgie, when all the lower animal instincts—and they are many and strong in the half-breed—are given full sway. When drunkenness and bestial passions rule the actions of these worse than savages. When murder and crimes of all sorts are committed without ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... a good deal of champagne and had a very pleasant little debauch; the girls got very merry, and I kissed Zoe once. She was not very angry. I think she is thoroughly charming, and I have accepted an invitation to take tea at her flat. She is either the wife or the ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... was there although held miraculously in abeyance these many weeks. The man was a genius, with all the temperamental fluctuations of mood which are comprehensible and forgivable in a genius. Dick did not begrudge the other any relief he might find in his debauch of ill humor, was more than willing he should work it off on his humble self if it could do any good though he would be immensely relieved when the old friendly ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... the barriers of his limitations, to express himself, and to realise more abundant life. His self-indulgence just came to that; he wanted if only for a brief hour to live the larger life, to expand the soul, to enter untrodden regions, and gather to himself new experience. That drunken debauch was a quest for life, a quest for God. Men in their sinful follies to-day, and their blank atheism, and their foul blasphemies, their trampling upon things that are beautiful and good, are engaged in this dim, ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... forcible figures and phrases, I appreciated, as no other listener, I dare say, the peculiar vividness and strength and absolute blasphemy of his metaphors. The cause of it all, as near as I could make out, was that the man, who was mate, had gone on a debauch before leaving San Francisco, and then had the poor taste to die at the beginning of the voyage ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... face and hands in the stream and then sat him down to a breakfast of biscuit. As she returned she met the two sailors, who, although they were now fairly sober, bore upon their faces the marks of a fearful debauch. Evidently they had been drinking heavily. She drew herself up and looked at them, and they slunk past ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard

... fill in details of what the coulee held: the white canvas tops of prairie schooners, some spans of oxen grazing near, a group of blatant, profane whiskey-smugglers from Montana, and in the wagons a cargo of liquor to debauch the Bloods and ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... huge tankards through a perfect forest of orange trees in tubs; for, worse luck to my morals, I have not seen a single frightful example, not one individual balancing dispersedly over his legs. In the grand duchy of Baden the debauch is punished by a law of somewhat harsh logic, which commits to prison both drunkards and those who have furnished the wherewithal to excess. The common people form a nation of drinkers, not drunkards. The beer-tables are usually placed in the open air, with shelter for the patrons ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... that all this time Christina cowered at the discordant sounds below, trembled, and prayed while she waited on her poor young charge, who tossed and moaned in fever and suffering. She was still far from recovered when the materials of the debauch failed, and the household began to return to its usual state. She was soon restlessly pining for her brother; and when her father came up to see her, received him with scant welcome, and entreaties for Ebbo. She knew she should be better if she might only sit on his knee, and lay her head ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... silent. Oh, how I longed then for the dear soothings of maternal Nature, as my wounded heart was still further stung by the roar of heartless merriment from the public-house, by the sight of the drunkard reeling home, having lost the memory of what he would find there in oblivious debauch, and by the more appalling salutations of those melancholy beings to whom the name of home was a mockery. I ran on at my utmost speed until I found myself I knew not how, close to Westminster Abbey, and was attracted by the deep and swelling tone of the organ. I entered with soothing ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... departure, an adventure which, though frivolous, might enable him to give Mary's friends in France a melancholy idea of her situation. This nobleman, with the earl of Bothwell and some other young courtiers, had been engaged, after a debauch, to pay a visit to a woman called Alison Craig, who was known to be liberal of her favors; and because they were denied admittance, they broke the windows, thrust open the door, and committed some disorders in searching for the damsel. It ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... is introduced. "Boots" makes you acquainted with the chambermaid, and the hotel proprietor unites you in the bonds of friendship with the clerk at the desk. Intercourse with one's fellows becomes one long debauch of introduction. In this country where every liberty is respected, it is a curious fact that we should be denied the most important of all rights, that ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... and dreadful to look at,—bloated and badly marked with the unmistakable marks of a wicked week's debauch. He roughly said: ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... Gesticulating, he pressed forward among them from where he had retired to the rear after my late rebuke. Gesticulating, his voice rising into a senile scream, he upbraided me for folly, extravagance, unthrift and prodigality. He declared that such indulgence would ruin me, would debauch him and his fellows and would, by its evil example, infect, corrupt and deprave the whole countryside. He railed at me. He vowed that, whatever the rest might do, he would use all his powers of persuasion to urge them to stick to their ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... one hand she held a bow and arrows and in the other a bared blade, and she asked him, "Art thou Ibrahim, son of al-Khasib, lord of Egypt?" "He I am," answered the Prince; and she said, "What ne'er-do-well art thou, who comes to debauch the daughters of Kings? Come: speak with the Sultan."[FN334] "Therewith" (quoth Ibrahim) "I fell down in a swoon and the sailors died[FN335] in their skins for fear; but, when she saw what had betided me, she pulled off her beard and throwing down her sword, ungirdled ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... with the keys to release the dairy-mother. But it was too late—the horrible agony had already killed her; and when the hands of the corpse were unbound, both arms fell of themselves to the ground, out of the sockets. [Footnote: Such scenes of satanic cruelty and beastly debauch, mingled together with the proceedings of justice, were very frequent during the witch-trials. How would it rejoice me if, upon contemplating this present age, I could exclaim with my whole heart, "What progression—infinite progression—in manners and humanity!" But, alas! ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... abominations,—this the chalice of the fornications of rapine, usury, and oppression, which was held out by the gorgeous Eastern harlot,—which so many of the people, so many of the nobles of this land had drained to the very dregs. Do you think that no reckoning was to follow this lewd debauch? that no payment was to be demanded for this riot of public drunkenness and national prostitution? Here, you have it here before you! The principal of the grand election-manager must be indemnified; accordingly, the claims of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... eighteen months, without thinking of returning it! But if he had lost that sum to Jansen,(700) or to any of the honourable men at White's, he would think his honour engaged to pay it. There is nothing, sure, so whimsical as modern honour! You may debauch a woman upon a promise of marriage, and not marry her; you may ruin your tailor's or your baker's family by not paying them; you may make Mr. Mann maintain you for eighteen months, as a public minister, out of his own pocket, and still be a man of honour! But, not to pay a common sharper, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... cheeks proclaim the truth, The faded emblems of a wasted youth. All, all are loathsome in this motley crew, The Peer, the Snob, the Gentile, and the Jew, Young men and old, the greybeards and the boys, These dull professors of debauch and noise." ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various

... her to be transiently flustered by a lovely buck, would yield to that madness for an instant, or confess it to her dearest friend. Women know how little such purely superficial values are worth. The voice of their order, the first taboo of their freemasonry, is firmly against making a sentimental debauch of the ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... contrary, the bonds of the family were more loosened than strengthened by the ascetic-hierarchical religiosity of the church."[1236] Dulaure[1237] quotes Gerson and Nicolas de Clemangis that convents in the fifteenth century were places of debauch. Geiler, in a sermon in Strasburg Cathedral, gave a shocking description of convents.[1238] A convent is described as a brothel for neighboring nobles.[1239] At the end of the fifteenth century the revolt and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... is very small; and there are so few interruptions, such as life teems with on the land, that I read myself almost stupid. Recommend me a sea-voyage any time for a man who is behind in his reading. I am making up years of it. It is an orgy, a debauch; and I am sure the addled sailors adjudge me the queerest ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London



Words linked to "Debauch" :   carnalise, sensualise, lead off, change, alter, bastardise, modify, lead astray, revelry, bacchanalia, poison, sensualize, revel, carnalize, bastardize, suborn, infect



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