debauch

noun

1. An individual act of debauchery.

   “[E]v'ry twentieth pace / Conducts the unguarded noſe to ſuch a whiff / Of ſtale debauch forth-iſſuing from the ſtyes / That law has licenſed, as makes temp'rance reel.”

   “I rose by candle-light, and consumed, in the intensest application, the hours which every other individual of our party wasted in enervating slumbers, from the hesternal dissipation or debauch.”

   “As I supported him towards his lodgings I could see that he was not only suffering from the effects of a recent debauch, but that a long course of intemperance had affected his nerves and his brain.”

   “Greene died of a debauch; and Marlowe, the gracer of tragedians, perished in an ignominious brawl.”

   “[T]he room probably was one which he actually used for opium debauches.”

2. An orgy.

   “The flowers, oppressive to the eyes, blazed with not a petal stirring, in a debauch of sun.”

   “[T]here were always the gay and silly sensual young girls that Yossarian had found and brought there and those that the sleepy enlisted men returning to Pianosa after their own exhausting seven-day debauch had brought there.”

verb

1. (transitive)To morally corrupt (someone); to seduce.

   “But the Devil had met with too much Success in his first Attempts, not to go on with his general Resolution of debauching the Minds of Men, and bringing them off from God.”

2. (transitive)To debase (something); to lower the value of (something).

   “[S]aving of all kinds is pointless when interest is microscopic and state-sponsored inflation is debauching the currency.”

3. (intransitive)To indulge in revelry.