The definition of alienate is when a person turns those who once cared into people who no longer care, either by making others feel angry and/or by causing them to ignore a person.
An example of alienate is when a family member has been abusing drugs, and their behavior has caused the rest of the family to no longer be able to tolerate having them around.
An example of alienate is when someone tells all your friends that you lied to them and your friends no longer speak to you.
"alienate." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 21 April 2019. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/Alienate>.
To cause to become unfriendly or hostile; estrange: alienate a friend; alienate potential supporters by taking extreme positions.
To cause to become withdrawn or unresponsive; isolate or dissociate emotionally: The numbing labor tended to alienate workers.
Law To transfer (property or a right) to the ownership of another, especially by an act of the owner rather than by inheritance.
Latin aliēnāre aliēnāt- from Latin aliēnus alien ; see alien .
Estranged; withdrawn in affection; foreign; with from.
O alienate from God. John Milton. Paradise Lost line 4643.
To estrange; to withdraw affections or attention from; to make indifferent or averse, where love or friendship before subsisted; to wean.
Alienate is largely synonymous with estrange. However, alienate is used primarily to refer to driving off (“he alienated her with his atrocious behavior”) or to offend a group (“the imprudent remarks alienated the urban demographic”), while estrange is used rather to mean “cut off relations”, particularly in a family setting.
Latin aliēnātus, perfect passive participle of aliēnō (“alienate, estrange”), from aliēnus. See alien, and confer aliene.
This popular Romanism was the greatest of all Gustavus's difficulties, because it tended to alienate the Swedish peasants.
Even where we least like him we find nothing small or mean to alienate our respect from him.
To this the beys assented, but with considerable misgivings; for they had intercepted letters from Au to the Albanians, endeavouring to alienate them from their side to his own.
Alliances with various land powers, and an inability to understand the true relations which alone could unite the league, combined to alienate the allies, who could discover no reason for the expenditure of their contributions on protecting Sparta or Corinth against Thebes.
The Statute of Mortmain forbade any man to alienate land to the church without royal licence.