vulgarize

present singular third person vulgarizes · participle present vulgarizing · participle past vulgarized · past vulgarized · alternative vulgarise

1. To make vulgar.
   1. To make commonplace, crass, lewd.

      Words only vulgarize love and blunt its edge.

      1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., published 1921, page 167

      2 more examples

      With much labor we got our things up the steps, and then, looking back, took one last long survey of that strange land, soon I fear to be vulgarized, the prey of hunter and prospector, but to each of us a dreamland of glamour and romance, a land where we had dared much, suffered much, and learned much - our land, as we shall ever fondly call it.

      1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC

      "Yes," said Mr. Flushing. "And in my opinion," he continued, "the absence of population to which Hirst objects is precisely the significant touch. You must admit, Hirst, that a little Italian town even would vulgarise the whole scene, would detract from the vastness — the sense of elemental grandeur."

      1915, Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

   2. To convert (religious rites) so as to use the vulgate (language of the commoners).