deject

From Old French dejeter, from Latin deicere (“to throw down”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪˈdʒɛkt/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛkt

deject (third-person singular simple present dejects, present participle dejecting, simple past and past participle dejected)

1. (transitive) Make sad or dispirited.

   Synonyms: depress, get down; see also Thesaurus:sadden

   • 1743, Robert Drury, The Pleasant, and Surprizing Adventures of Mr. Robert Drury, during his Fifteen Years Captivity on the Island of Madagascar‎, London, page 73:

     […] the Thoughts of my Friends, and native Country, and the Improbability of ever seeing them again, made me very melancholy; and dejected me to that Degree, that sometimes I could not forbear indulging my Grief in private, and bursting out into a Flood of Tears.

   • 1933, Arthur Melville Jordan, Educational Psychology, page 60:

     On the other hand, there is nothing which dejects school children quite so much as failure.

2. (obsolete, transitive) To cast downward.

   Synonyms: downcast, throw down

   • 1642, Thomas Fuller, The Holy State‎, Cambridge: John Williams, Book 5, Chapter 1, p. 358:

     […] sometimes she dejects her eyes in a seeming civility; and many mistake in her a cunning for a modest look.

   • 1803, James Thomson, “Summer”, in The seasons; with the life of the author, page 107:

     Princely wisdom, then, Dejects his watchful eye; and from the hand Of feeble justice, ineffectual, drop The sword and balance: mute the voice of joy, and hush'd the clamour of the busy world.

   • 2014, Robert Toft, With Passionate Voice, page 198:

     supplication, that is, entreatment, can be made more artificial if the speaker dejects both hands.

3. To debase or humble.

   Synonyms: abase, humiliate, put someone in their place

   • 1853, John Bradford, Aubrey Townsend, The Writings of John Bradford, M.A., page 67:

     ... as also we might have more feeling and sense of our sweet Saviour Jesus Christ, by the humbling and dejecting of us, thereby to make us, as more desirous of him, so him more sweet and pleasant unto us: the which thing the good Spirit of God work sensibly in all our hearts, for God's holy name's sake.

   • 1863, Thomé Alvares de Andrade, The sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ, from the Portuguese, page 274:

     I adore thee , O divine and amiable hand ! that comfortest me by chastising me , that strengthenest me by afflicting me , that elevatest me by dejecting me , and that givest me life by mortifying me.

   • 1994, The Indian Police Journal - Volume 41, page 43:

     As a person sitting over the counter in a bank, represents the bank by virtue of his assignment, projects or dejects the image of the bank as a whole; the policeman on duty at the police station also represents the Police Force as a whole and projects or dejects the image of the Police with the public.

   • 2009, J.W.C, Still in It Somewhere out There, page 31:

     Though she dejects the consideration, passionate spells Drawn from her bible kept him alive As well as kept their ungrateful brats lucky.

deject (plural dejects)

1. One who is lowly or abject.
   • 1994, Tom Pickard, Tiepin Eros: New & Selected Poems, page 72:

     Lovers, lovers, football brothers; rejects, dejects, clowns and crakaz: boot him one, in the nakaz!

   • 2002, Julia Kristeva, Kelly Oliver, The Portable Kristeva, page 238:

     Not at all short of but always with and through perception and words, the sublime is a something added that expands us, overstrains us, and causes us to be both here, as dejects, and there, as others and sparkling.

   • 2013, Aalya Ahmad, Sean Moreland, Fear and Learning: Essays on the Pedagogy of Horror, page 236:

     All are dejects, and all are drawn to the very places and things that threaten their own destruction.

   • 2020, Weird Mysticism: Philosophical Horror and the Mystical Text, page 110:

     On the other side of this double refusal, he is a deject—a ghostly placeholder of the abject; the stray anti-locus of the negative.

2. (usually in the plural) A waste product.
   • 1894, Brooklyn. Dept. of Health, Annual Report, page 71:

     ... the bacteriological examination of the dejects of all persons presenting choleraic symptoms and of all persons who have been exposed to infection and who have loose and frequent discharges from the bowels ; the disinfection of the dejects of such persons and of all articles which may possibly be contaiminated by the same;

   • 2001, Werner Baer, The Brazilian Economy: Growth and Development:

     Along the 90 kilometers of the Tiete river in the greater São Paulo region, it receives a huge amount of dejects, both industrial and human (the latter, dejects collected by sewer systems, dumped untreated or with inadequate treatment in the river).

   • 2007, Martin Kappas, Global Change Issues in Developing and Emerging Countries, page 351:

     The region is characterized by an intense intervention of anthropogenic activities, existence of more than 1.700 oil wells, dutes, storage and transport structures of gas and oil, ponds for stabilization and treatment of dejects, pumping and collecting stations besides a marine salt industry and wide areas wtih activities of shrimp farms.

• dejected
• dejection