To degrade means to lower something in quality, value, or dignity. When you degrade something, you make it worse or less worthy than it was before.

A photograph degrades over time if it fades in sunlight or gets crumpled and torn. A fence degrades when weather causes the wood to rot and splinter. Scientists use the word when materials break down: a plastic bottle degrades slowly over hundreds of years, while an apple core degrades quickly into soil. In these cases, degrading describes a natural process of deterioration.

The word takes on a harsher meaning when applied to people. To degrade someone means to treat them as if they have less value or deserve less respect. If a coach constantly insults players instead of helping them improve, that coach is degrading them. When people are degraded, their dignity suffers.

The adjective degrading describes anything that makes you feel ashamed or strips away your self-respect. Being forced to do something humiliating feels degrading. Work that treats people like machines rather than human beings can be degrading.

Something can also be degraded in quality without involving physical deterioration: when you compress a video file too much to save space, you get a degraded image with fuzzy details and blocky colors. The picture still exists, but it has lost important information.