: damaging or lowering the character, status, or reputation of someone or something
The work was dirty and demeaning, though not quite as somber as it sounds. Gillian Beer
He changed one song title … to slip around radio's reluctance to play songs with demeaning words in them … Neil Strauss
[Sylvia Plath] is most helpfully linked, not to the demeaning disputes of her milieu, but to such powerful predecessors as Theodore Roethke, T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, and above all Emily Dickinson. Joyce Carol Oates
demeaninglyadverb
When Lorna … takes control of the inmates' pharmacy, she decides that no one needs medication. It's her belief that those who are demeaningly labeled "crazy" are given medication in order to stifle their uniqueness … Sophie-Marie Prime