DEFACE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Deface

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/dɪfˈeɪs/ Listen

verb

Deface v. t. (past & past part. defaced; pres. part. defacing)

To destroy or mar the face or external appearance of; to disfigure; to injure, spoil, or mar, by effacing or obliterating important features or portions of; as, to deface a monument; to deface an edifice; to deface writing; to deface a note, deed, or bond; to deface a record. "This high face defaced." "So by false learning is good sense defaced."

To destroy; to make null. (Obs.) "(Profane scoffing) doth... deface the reverence of religion." "For all his power was utterly defaste (defaced)."

Synonyms: See Efface.

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Etymology of 'Deface'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Deface" Quotes from Famous Books

... with one little worry, one little thought which destroys your perfect peace. It is like the polish on a mirror, or an exquisite toilet table, one scratch will destroy it; and the finer it is the smaller the scratch that will deface it. And so your rest can be destroyed by a very little thing. Perhaps you have trusted in God about your future salvation; but have you about your present business or earthly cares, your ...

— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... spread their fame in ages past, And poets once had promised they should last. Some fresh engraved appear'd of wits renown'd; I look'd again, nor could their trace be found. Critics I saw, that other names deface, And fix their own, with labour, in their place: Their own, like others, soon their place resign'd, Or disappear'd, and left the first behind. 40 Nor was the work impair'd by storms alone, But felt the approaches of too warm a sun; For Fame, impatient of extremes, decays ...

— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... through the whole book and deface and defile it all. But the next picture arrested his attention, and he forgot himself in studying it. It represented the explosion of a factory, and consisted of little beyond a huge mass of smoke and fire, around and above which ...

— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... stepped on one side from the immediate subject because this is as good an instance as any we are likely to come across of a certain almost extraneous fault which does deface the work of Bernard Shaw. It is a fault only to be mentioned when we have made the solidity of the merits quite clear. To say that Shaw is merely making game of people is demonstrably ridiculous; at least a fairly systematic ...

— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... to submit to the impertinence of the idle; but, as soon as a man has had the misfortune to make himself a name, he becomes public property. Every one rakes into his life, relates his most trivial actions, and insults his feelings; he becomes like those walls, which every passer-by may deface with some abusive writing. Perhaps you will say that I have myself encouraged this curiosity by publishing my Confessions. But the world forced me to it. They looked into my house through the blinds, and they slandered me; I have opened the doors and windows, so that they should at least ...

— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

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