bastardize
English
![](Images/wiktionary/Anthonis_Mor_001.jpg.webp)
Mary I of England, who was bastardized by her father Henry VIII
Alternative forms
- bastardise
Etymology
bastard + -ize
Pronunciation
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈbæstɚdaɪz/
Audio (UK) (file)
Verb
bastardize (third-person singular simple present bastardizes, present participle bastardizing, simple past and past participle bastardized)
- To claim or demonstrate that someone is a bastard, or illegitimate.
- 1765–1769, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, (please specify |book=I to IV), Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] Clarendon Press, OCLC 65350522:
- Our law is so indulgent as not to bastardize the child, if it be born, though not begotten, in lawful wedlock.
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- To reduce from a higher to a lower state, such as by removing refined elements or introducing debased elements; to debase.
- The simplified word processor is a less-functional, bastardized version of the full program.
- 2017, Douglas Charles Kane, Beren and Lúthien (2017) by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien, in Journal of Tolkien Research, Volume 4, Issue 2, Article 5,
- The third potential audience is the general public at large, who either never has read any of Tolkien’s books or perhaps read The Lord of the Rings and/or The Hobbit long ago, but whose knowledge about Tolkien’s created secondary universe comes, if at all, mostly from seeing Peter Jackson’s bastardized adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and/or The Hobbit.
- To beget out of wedlock.
- c. 1603–1606, Shakespeare, William, King Lear, act 1, scene 2, lines 130–132:
- I should / have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the / firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.
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Synonyms
- (introduce debased elements into): mongrelize