embase

Verb

embase (third-person singular simple present embases, present participle embasing, simple past and past participle embased)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To lower physically.
   • [God had] Embast the valleys, and embost the hills.1608, [Guillaume de Salluste] Du Bartas, translated by Josuah Sylvester, Du Bartas His Deuine Weekes and Workes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Humfrey Lownes [and are to be sold by Arthur Iohnson...
2. (archaic, transitive) To bring down or lower in position, status, etc.; to degrade, humiliate.
   • And either vowd with all their power and witt
     To let not others honour be defaste
     Of friend or foe, who ever it embaste […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
   • Such pitiful embellishments of speech as serve for nothing but to embase divinity.1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London

   Synonyms:

   debase, humble, relegate, abase, bring down to size, cut down to size, defame, degrade, demean, demote

3. (archaic, transitive) To lower the value of (a coin, commodity etc.); to debase (a coin) with alloy.
   • Alloy in coin of gold […] may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it.1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Truth”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC

   Synonyms:

   abase, alloy, sophisticate, adulter, adulterate, adulterize, balderdash, corrupt, bastardize, dash