dehumanize
/diːˈhjuːmənaɪz/
dehumanize verb: to take away humanity; to remove or deny human qualities, characteristics, or attributes; to impersonalize.
Verb
dehumanize (third-person singular simple present dehumanizes, present participle dehumanizing, simple past and past participle dehumanized)
- To take away humanity; to remove or deny human qualities, characteristics, or attributes; to impersonalize.
- In its consistently logical form Quietism makes communion between man and God an impossibility by annulling the distinction between them, ultimately reducing God to a vague and empty abstraction, and dehumanizing man.1919, James Hastings, John Alexander Selbie, Louis Herbert Gray, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics: Picts-Sacraments, page 535
- Yet we are dismayed by the failures and forces that dehumanize and defeat the finest dreams and plans of this generation.1968, Stewart L. Udall, 1976: Agenda for Tomorrow, page 3
dehumanize meaning in Vietnamese
dehumanize in Vietnamese
- to take away humanity
- phi nhân hoá
Examples of dehumanize in a sentence
- To what extent can we stop making the culture of the Other so dehumanized and Satanized as to make the Other fit to be genocidable?1999, Ursula E. Beitter, The New Europe at the Crossroads, page 129:
- And, in this country, the traditional, ingrained way to dehumanize people, to make both their pain and their individuality irrelevant, is to rely on their race.2003, Stephen P. Garvey, editor, Beyond Repair? America's Death Penalty, →ISBN, page 141:
- From this sort of work, we learn to have a contempt for sadism, for anything that dehumanizes, and to have compassion for the everyday people who pay the price for the designs of proud and evil men.2023 November 2, David Brooks, “How to Stay Sane in Brutalizing Times”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 04 Nov 2023:
Antonyms of dehumanize
Forms of dehumanize
| third-person singular present | dehumanizes |
|---|---|
| present participle | dehumanizing |
| past participle | dehumanized |
| past | dehumanized |
| alternative form | de-humanize |
| alternative form | de-humanise |
| alternative UK | dehumanise |
Origin of dehumanize
From de- + humanize.
Words formed from dehumanize
Questions about dehumanize
- What does dehumanize mean?
- Dehumanize means to take away humanity; to remove or deny human qualities, characteristics, or attributes; to impersonalize.
- What is dehumanize in Vietnamese?
- Dehumanize in Vietnamese is phi nhân hoá. See Dehumanize meaning in Vietnamese.
- How do you use dehumanize in a sentence?
- To what extent can we stop making the culture of the Other so dehumanized and Satanized as to make the Other fit to be genocidable?
- What part of speech is dehumanize?
- Dehumanize is a verb.
- How do you pronounce dehumanize?
- Dehumanize is pronounced /diːˈhjuːmənaɪz/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of dehumanize?
- The past tense of dehumanize is dehumanized.
Words near dehumanize in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dehumanize (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-dehumanize.wav.
Cite this entry: “dehumanize.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dehumanize. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.