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Traduce is one of a number of English synonyms that you can choose when you need a word that means "to injure by speaking ill of." Choose traduce when you want to stress the deep personal humiliation, disgrace, and distress felt by the victim. If someone doesn't actually lie, but makes statements that injure by specific and often subtle misrepresentations, malign may be the more precise choice. To make it clear that the speaker is malicious and the statements made are false, calumniate is a good option. But if you need to say that certain statements represent an attempt to destroy a reputation by open and direct abuse, vilify is the word you want.
Examples of traduce in a Sentence
Kori Schake, The Atlantic, 22 Mar. 2026 In roundtable talks, their full humanity emerged: their fatigue at fighting gangsters to a draw and their guilt for how that fight traduced them. —Paul Solotaroff, Rolling Stone, 11 May 2025 Those serenely appraising eyes refuse to be traduced by any fiction. —Washington Post, 14 Sep. 2023 Her infatuation traduces the complexities of interracial, interspecies, and cross-cultural attraction. —Armond White, National Review, 26 May 2023 And the academic establishment traduced it, mocked it, minimized it. —Ariana Marsh, Harper's BAZAAR, 6 Mar. 2023 Its founding principles and its 1968 charter are of a bygone era, and they have been violated and traduced by the Palestinians’ own official practice. —Hussein Agha, Foreign Affairs, 16 Feb. 2021 Authors and illustrators are being flamed online and having their reputations traduced and their careers threatened for transgressing the capricious new standards of ideological purity. —Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 31 Jan. 2020
Cite this Entry
“Traduce.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.grautoblog.com/dictionary/traduce. Accessed 26 Apr. 2026.
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