deject

/dɪˈdʒɛkt/

deject verb: make sad or dispirited.

Verb

deject (third-person singular simple present dejects, present participle dejecting, simple past and past participle dejected)

(transitive) Make sad or dispirited.
- […] the Thoughts of my Friends, and native Country, and the Improbability of ever seeing them again, made me very melancholy; and dejected me to that Degree, that sometimes I could not forbear indulging my Grief in private, and bursting out into a Flood of Tears.1743, Robert Drury, The Pleasant, and Surprizing Adventures of Mr. Robert Drury, during his Fifteen Years Captivity on the Island of Madagascar, London, page 73
- On the other hand, there is nothing which dejects school children quite so much as failure.1933, Arthur Melville Jordan, Educational Psychology, page 60
Synonyms:

depress, get down, aggrieve, attrist, begloom, begrieve, besorrow, grieve, pain, bring down
(obsolete, transitive) To cast downward.
- […] sometimes she dejects her eyes in a seeming civility; and many mistake in her a cunning for a modest look.1642, Thomas Fuller, The Holy State, Cambridge: John Williams, Book 5, Chapter 1, p. 358
- Princely wisdom, then, Dejects his watchful eye; and from the hand Of feeble justice, ineffectual, drop The sword and balance: mute the voice of joy, and hush'd the clamour of the busy world.1803, James Thomson, “Summer”, in The seasons; with the life of the author, page 107
Synonyms:

downcast, throw down
To debase or humble.
- ... as also we might have more feeling and sense of our sweet Saviour Jesus Christ, by the humbling and dejecting of us, thereby to make us, as more desirous of him, so him more sweet and pleasant unto us: the which thing the good Spirit of God work sensibly in all our hearts, for God's holy name's...1853, John Bradford, Aubrey Townsend, The Writings of John Bradford, M.A., page 67
- I adore thee, O divine and amiable hand! that comfortest me by chastising me, that strengthenest me by afflicting me, that elevatest me by dejecting me, and that givest me life by mortifying me.1863, Thomé Alvares de Andrade, The sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ, from the Portuguese, page 274
Synonyms:

abase, humiliate, put someone in their place

Noun

deject (plural dejects)

One who is lowly or abject.
- Lovers, lovers, football brothers; rejects, dejects, clowns and crakaz: boot him one, in the nakaz!1994, Tom Pickard, Tiepin Eros: New & Selected Poems, page 72
- Not at all short of but always with and through perception and words, the sublime is a something added that expands us, overstrains us, and causes us to be both here, as dejects, and there, as others and sparkling.2002, Julia Kristeva, Kelly Oliver, The Portable Kristeva, page 238
(plural-normally) A waste product.
- ... the bacteriological examination of the dejects of all persons presenting choleraic symptoms and of all persons who have been exposed to infection and who have loose and frequent discharges from the bowels; the disinfection of the dejects of such persons and of all articles which may possibly be...1894, Brooklyn. Dept. of Health, Annual Report, page 71
- Along the 90 kilometers of the Tiete river in the greater São Paulo region, it receives a huge amount of dejects, both industrial and human (the latter, dejects collected by sewer systems, dumped untreated or with inadequate treatment in the river).2001, Werner Baer, The Brazilian Economy: Growth and Development

deject meaning in Bengali and Kannada

deject in Bengali

হতাশ করা

deject in Kannada

ಕೊರಗು, ಎದೆಗುಂದು

Examples of deject in a sentence

supplication, that is, entreatment, can be made more artificial if the speaker dejects both hands.2014, Robert Toft, With Passionate Voice, page 198:
Though she dejects the consideration, passionate spells Drawn from her bible kept him alive As well as kept their ungrateful brats lucky.2009, J.W.C, Still in It Somewhere out There, page 31:
All are dejects, and all are drawn to the very places and things that threaten their own destruction.2013, Aalya Ahmad, Sean Moreland, Fear and Learning: Essays on the Pedagogy of Horror, page 236:
On the other side of this double refusal, he is a deject—a ghostly placeholder of the abject; the stray anti-locus of the negative.2020, Weird Mysticism: Philosophical Horror and the Mystical Text, page 110:

Synonyms of deject

24 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of deject

Forms of deject

Verb
third-person singular present	dejects
present participle	dejecting
past participle	dejected
past	dejected
Noun
plural	dejects

Origin of deject

From Old French dejeter, from Latin dēiectus, past participle of dēicere (“to throw down”), from dē- (“from, down from”) + iacere (“to throw”).

Words formed from deject

Words that rhyme with deject

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about deject

What does deject mean?: Deject means make sad or dispirited.
What is deject in Bengali?: Deject in Bengali is হতাশ করা. See Deject meaning in Bengali.
How do you use deject in a sentence?: supplication, that is, entreatment, can be made more artificial if the speaker dejects both hands.
What part of speech is deject?: Deject can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce deject?: Deject is pronounced /dɪˈdʒɛkt/ (UK).
What is the past tense of deject?: The past tense of deject is dejected.

Words near deject in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: deject (page history and authors); deject (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); deject (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-deject.wav.

Cite this entry: “deject.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deject. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.