dehumanize

verb

de·​hu·​man·​ize (ˌ)dē-ˈ(h)yü-mə-ˌnīz 

dehumanized; dehumanizing; dehumanizes

transitive verb

: to deprive (someone or something) of human qualities, personality, or dignity: such as

a

: to subject (someone, such as a prisoner) to inhuman or degrading conditions or treatment

"… you treat people with respect, you get respect back. You treat them like animals, you strip search them, you dehumanize them, you lock them up, you don't feed them … you are going to get that back … "

—Adelina Iftene

b

: to address or portray (someone) in a way that obscures or demeans that person's humanity or individuality

propaganda that dehumanizes the enemy

I'm always struck by the way language is used to dehumanize others.

—Anna Lind-Guzik

Treating Chicagoland violence as merely a tally necessarily dehumanizes its victims, but it also obscures so much of the larger story about that violence.

—Gene Demby

But that approach ignores the fundamental dynamics of racism, which dehumanizes people along crude lines, ignoring any internal distinctions among those with broadly similar looks, treating them all as uniformly suspicious.

—Sangay K. Mishra

c

: to remove or reduce human involvement or interaction in (something, such as a process or place)

Nurses are also fearful that the use of technology will dehumanize patient care.

—Laurie A. Huryk

Social media dehumanizes personal interactions, taking them out of the dining room, the neighborhood store and workplace and into a nowhere we call cyberspace.

—Kay S. Hymowitz

"To me, Ms. Cao [Fei] is trying to portray that, even in a dehumanized environment like the automated warehouse, you need that inspiration or that order from up high."

—David Barboza

dehumanization

(ˌ)dē-ˌ(h)yü-mə-nə-ˈzā-shən 

noun

Synonyms

• animalize
• bestialize
• brutalize

Examples of dehumanize in a Sentence

Inspectors have observed terrible factory conditions that dehumanize workers.

the dehumanizing nature of torture

Recent Examples on the Web

The pope told the council of world leaders in Fasano, Italy, that AI offers immense benefit to the human race, but also threatens to dehumanize society. —Timothy H.j. Nerozzi Fox News, Fox News, 14 June 2024

This is an opportunity to humanize a situation and a demographic that is so dehumanized in a lot of our political rhetoric. —Jordan Greene, Peoplemag, 12 June 2024

Siddiq is at his most evocative when comparing the dehumanizing prison-intake process, where his naked body is overexamined and he’s chained to other future inmates, to slavery. —Jesse David Fox, Vulture, 30 May 2024

When the city gives a vulnerable group of predominantly people of color differential and lesser legal treatment, while simultaneously dehumanizing and degrading them, no one can be surprised when the broader public increasingly comes to regard that same group as lesser. —Marika Dias, New York Daily News, 20 Mar. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1818, in the meaning defined above