Deprive means to keep from having. "As a parent, Sharon feels it's best to deprive her children of sugar cereals, because when they eat sweet foods they get so loud and hyper that she can't hear her soap operas."
Deprive can also mean to take away something that someone already had, or feels they deserve to have, like basic human rights. "A crowd gathered to protest the man's imprisonment for a crime he did not commit; they didn't want to allow the government to deprive him of his freedom." The word comes from the Latin, de", which means "entirely," and privare, which means "release from." Put together, they mean to "entirely release from." In this case, the imprisoned man's freedom is being "entirely released," or taken away, and he'll no longer have it.
