stoop to
Học thuậtThân thiện
Definition
- Verb (transitive):
- To lower one's standards or principles to engage in an activity, often one considered demeaning or unworthy: To deign or condescend to do something, typically implying a compromise of one's dignity or morals.
- To make concessions to: To yield or adapt one's behavior to a lower level, often to accommodate someone else or to achieve an end.
Usage Examples
- Verb:
- I never thought he would stoop to cheating on the exam. (This shows he lowered his moral standards to do something wrong.)
- She refused to stoop to their level of petty insults. (This indicates she would not compromise her dignity by acting similarly.)
- The company would not stoop to making false claims about its competitors. (This demonstrates a refusal to engage in unethical behavior.)
Advanced Usage
- "stoop to doing something": This is the most common grammatical structure, using a gerund (-ing form) after the phrase.
- He has stooped to lying to his own family.
- "stoop to somebody's level": A common idiom meaning to behave as badly as someone else.
- Don't argue with him; you're just stooping to his level.
- Impersonal/Figurative Use: Can be applied to entities like companies, governments, or groups.
- The newspaper should not stoop to publishing sensationalist gossip.
Variants and Related Words
- Stoop (verb): The base form, meaning to bend the body forward and downward.
- He had to stoop to enter the low doorway.
- Stooping (adjective/noun): Describing the action or a posture of bending forward.
- His stooping posture was due to years at the desk.
Synonyms
- Condescend: To do something that one considers beneath one's dignity.
- Deign: To do something that one considers to be beneath one's dignity (often used in negative constructions).
- Lower oneself: To behave in a way that is less respectable than usual.
- Sink: To descend to a lower level of behavior or condition.
Related Phrasal Verbs
- Stoop down: To bend the body forward and downward physically. (Note: This is a different phrasal verb from "stoop to").
- She stooped down to pick up the coin.
Related Idioms
- Beneath one's dignity: Too unimportant or immoral for someone to do. This concept is central to the meaning of "stoop to."
- Such behavior is beneath his dignity; he would never stoop to it.
- Stoop to conquer: A literary allusion (from Oliver Goldsmith's play ) meaning to lower one's status or pretensions to achieve an objective. This is a specific, less common usage.
- In her strategy, she decided to stoop to conquer, adopting a humble approach to win them over.