bastardization

• bastardisation

From bastard +‎ -ization.

bastardization (countable and uncountable, plural bastardizations)

1. The making of a bastard or bastards; Having children out of wedlock or destroying the legitimacy of children's paternity.
   • 1994, West's South Eastern Reporter, page 889:

     Given the serious and long-lasting effects of bastardization, resolution of the paternity issue should be accomplished with the active participation of the court, rather than involvement that is limited to reviewing a previously-executed document.

   • 1995, Walter Wadlington, Cases and materials on domestic relations, page 311:

     Our conclusion is not founded on the traditional arguments against bastardization: the social stigma imposed on the child and the financial burden imposed on the state.

   • 2000, Peter Saccio, Shakespeare's English Kings: History, Chronicle, and Drama, →ISBN:

     The flimsy bastardization of the princes was a flagrant violation of a cherished medieval principle, the right of inheritance.

   • 2010, Ron Shaham, The Expert Witness in Islamic Courts, →ISBN, page 186:

     In Egyptian law, the marital presumption of paternity remains unassailable, which indicates that the social purposes it is designed to server -- defending the integrity of the marital family, protecting against the bastardization of children, and preventing exposure of the immoral conduct of the parents --- are still the dominant societal norms.

2. The creation of offspring from two different species; cross-breeding.
   • 1901, Thomas Harrison Montgomery, A Study of the Chromosomes of the Germ Cells of Metazoa, page 213:

     The uneven number discovered in the four species mentioned may have arisen in one of two ways : through bastardization, or through a mitotic abnormality, each of which possibilities may now be considered. In the case of bastardization of a germ cell with one chromosomal number by a germ cell from another species with a different number, the uneven number eleven might be secured if a paternal germ cell of a species A, with the normal chromosomal number twelve, fertilizes a maternal germ cell of a species B with the normal number ten.

   • 1939, Knud Jessen, Ragnar Spärck, Danish scientific investigations in Iran, page 37:

     . It is remarkable that no less than 4 specimens (309, 345, 348, 357) from the area of bastardization show formation of eumelanin in numerous of the throat feathers instead of, as was to expected, phaeomelanin. Most probably this phenomenon too is attributable to bastardization.

   • 2012, H.U. Thiele, Carabid Beetles in Their Environments: A Study on Habitat Selection by Adaptations in Physiology and Behaviour, →ISBN:

     The males of the two species have very similar mating songs but those of the females differ. Although females could be induced to utter their mating song by males of the other species, the males were never lured by the call of females other than of their own species, so that copulation leading to bastardization did not occur (Strübing, 1965).

3. (by extension) The combining of separate races in marriage or breeding; miscegenation.
   • 1925, Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf:

     This is a basis for a natural, even though slow, process of regeneration, which gradually eliminates racial poisonings as long as a basic stock of racially pure elements is still present and a further bastardization does not take place.

   • 1951, C. A. Du Toit, Annals of the University of Stellenbosch:

     It is emphasized that the subject of bastardization in man is one of the most fundamental of anthropological questions and one which has hitherto not received its due quota of attention.

   • 1956, South Africa Parliament House of Assembly, Debates of the House of Assembly:

     Those people, in regard to appearance and way of life, were so different from the White people that intermingling or bastardization could practically not take place. The biological position was of such a nature that there was no possibility of bastardization. In spite of that, bastardization did take place here and there, and the progeny of that bastardization were so far removed from the Whites, and the Whites no longer had the biological ally, if I may call it that, to help them to remain White.

   • 2007, Elizabeth Haydon, Elegy for a Lost Star, →ISBN:

     While through my veils you may have recognized the traits of my Bolg father, one of a dozen soldiers that raped my Dhracian mother, who they chose to kidnap by a toss of the bones, what you now see is the bastardization of the race of which I was the first of a generation.

   • 2012, Mary Jo Maynes, Ann Waltner, The Family: A World History, →ISBN:

     Not everyone agreed with this logic, since in many colonies European men continued to establish commonlaw relationships with indigenous women even where marriages with European women were frequent. The critical economist Moritz Bonn made himself unpopular with German colonial authorities when he claimed in the first decade of the twentieth century that “[t]he main cause of bastardization in Africa was not the absence of white women but the presence of black ones.

   • 2014, Daniel Easterman, The Seventh Sanctuary, →ISBN:

     The basic racial criteria established previously by Professor Schultz and used until now as the basis for admission to the SS remain fundamentally valid, although I have suggested a more restricted policy of accepting only those in Schultz's first category, the pure Nordic, without any trace whatever of bastardization.

   • 2014, Richard A. Soloway, Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics and the Declining Birthrate in Twentieth-Century Britain, →ISBN, page 361:

     It was not that Powell and many other Britons did not fear for the quality of the race and complain on occasions about “bastardization” and “mongrelization,” but more often than not, their eugenic presuppositions were (and perhaps still are) implicit in their analyses of the birthrate rather than specifically articulated.

4. Any change or neologism in language that is viewed as a degradation.
   • 1996, James Lambert, The Macquarie Book of Slang, Sydney: Macquarie Library, page 2:

     And, hang on a sec, isn't bastardisation a bastardisation of language anyhow?

   • 2000, Vince Staten, Did Trojans Use Trojans?: A Trip Inside the Corner Drugstore, →ISBN, page 56:

     Q-Tip was a bastardization of cotton-tip, very much a bastardization.

   • 2004, Tinabantu - Volumes 2-3, page 46:

     Rastas have developed a speech and language culture out of the conventional English language. It is in fact a deliberate bastardization of the language of the oppressor, as a mark of protest against him; a psychological means of feeling free from bondage.

   • 2009, Feroze Moos, Don't Tell Me I'm Going to Die: Reflections on My Terminal Cancer, →ISBN:

     I had learnt of the bastardization of the term from my heart disease days.

   • 2011, John Jughead Pierson, The Last Temptation of Clarence Odbody, →ISBN, page 125:

     With this letter, you will find the travel guide that includes a bastardization of your unexpectedly superior words.

5. (more generally) The creation of an inferior copy or version; corruption, degradation, or debasement.
   • 1978, Park McGinty, Interpretation and Dionysos: Method in the Study of a God, →ISBN, page 35:

     In this manner they viewed traditional aspects of civilization as parts of the legitimate identity of a culture. Consequently, they could interpret religion as one meaningful way for each culture to deal with external reality rather than as a superstitious bastardization of reason.

   • 2007, Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War, →ISBN:

     This may include the bastardization or demolition of a building that no longer has a community to serve it or where its builders lack the economic or political power to resist threatening 'regeneration' or 'improvement plans'.

   • 2014, Harlan Ellison, The Other Glass Teat: Essays, →ISBN:

     It was an hour of bastardization of fine music that I suppose delighted the folks in Cedar Rapids and Buffalo.

   • 2014, Patriot Daisy, Chronicles of a Nigerian Woman in America, →ISBN, page 13:

     While a few others avow to science, and not to the creator of science, yet others are busy within make believe worlds of their own, trying to clone whatever their human possibilities can allow them to, thereby raging this earth with so much bastardization of what I call true nature of life.

6. Activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a group.
   • 2000, Overland - Issues 158-161, page 104:

     The 'inspiration' for Dogs are Barking, Taylor avers, came from reading Coulthard-Clarke's history of Royal Military College, Duntroon, with its accounts of bastardization at the college, and from the author's experience of hearing fellow-officers reminisce about bastardization at the college.

   • 2012, Helene Richards, Sheila Freeman, Bullying in the Workplace: An Occupational Hazard, →ISBN:

     In my experience, bullies usually have position power and have little idea that their behaviour is perceived by workers as bullying. They probably believe that bullying is restricted to bastardization-type behaviour and that they themselves are utilising effective management strategies.

   • 2016, Phillip T. Slee, Grace Skrzypiec, Well-Being, Positive Peer Relations and Bullying in School Settings, →ISBN, page 152:

     However, when one looks at defence force during history and around the world one can identify bullying which can also be known as 'hazing' or 'bastardization'.

   • 2017, Rachel Woodward, Claire Duncanson, The Palgrave International Handbook of Gender and the Military, →ISBN:

     Prior to the integration of women into militaries, incidents of violence were heavily situated around traditions of hazing and bastardization: men's violence towards other men.

• bastard
• bastardize, bastardise
• bastardized, bastardised