🇬🇧 Denigrate meaning: English Vocabulary Flash Card

To denigrate someone or something means to talk about them in a mean way that makes them seem less good, less smart, or less important than they really are. When you denigrate, you are putting someone down with your words instead of being fair or kind.

Mom told me not to denigrate my brain just because it forgot where I put my sandwich…in my other hand.

The dragon denigrated the knight’s armor by calling it a shiny tin can with anxiety issues.

When I denigrated my own handwriting, the pencil snapped in half from emotional damage.

The robot denigrated human laziness by asking, “You have legs; why are you still on the couch?”

“Denigrate” comes from a Latin word meaning “to blacken,” but today it just means speaking in a way that unfairly makes someone seem worse or less important.

At the school fair Sam painted a bright bird. The judge tried to denigrate his work, and some kids tried to denigrate the bird and tried to denigrate Sam. He cried. His sister said, "Do not denigrate him, and do not denigrate his work," and hugged Sam; the judge looked ashamed.

This word is at the C2 level, which means it represents the highest mastery of English. It’s often used in specialized or highly formal contexts and helps you communicate with precision and subtlety, much like a native speaker.

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