Other forms: demeaning, demeaned, demeans
To demean is to lower somebody's dignity. Demean yourself, a demeaning job, demeaning to women.
The participle is the commonest form, and demeaning work is work that insults the person doing it rather than work that is hard. There is an older and unrelated demean meaning to conduct oneself, which survives in demeanour.
1verbdemeanTo lower somebody's dignity.
“I won't demean myself by begging him for money.”
demean is a lowering.
De- plus mean in the sense of base or low, from Old English gemaene, common.
Old English
ġemǣne — mean, common
Middle English
mene
English, today
demean
Built from
(1595) From de + mean, from Middle English mene, aphetic variation of imene (“mean, base, common”), from Old English ġemǣne (“mean, common”). Compare English bemean.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA