unadorn

English

Etymology

un- + adorn

Verb

unadorn (third-person singular simple present unadorns, present participle unadorning, simple past and past participle unadorned)

  1. To add a feature or embellishment that makes something uglier; uglify.
    • 1891, Thomas Anderton, Letters from a Country House, page 57:
      No ugly monument of their ancestors disfigures the church walls, no hideous brick box unadorns the country churchyard, and a plain stone, perhaps moss grown, is all the record of their fathers they can show.
    • 1921, Pacific Rural Press - Volume 101, page 121:
      In connection with this splendid record I want to point a moral (though it will unadorn the tale), for I recently heard a city man say in a public meeting: “Why, these dairymen are getting rich. They have cows that will make a thousand pounds of butter in a year and look what they get for butter.”
    • 2000, Dana E. Stewart, ‎Alison Cornish, Sparks and Seeds: Medieval Literature and Its Afterlife:
      Sanchez glosses Garrula quo comix with the familiar warning against female loquacity — "silence adorns virgins, chattering unadorns them"
  2. To remove the adornments from.
    • 1997, George Plimpton, ‎Peter Matthiessen, ‎Donald Hall, The Paris Review, →ISBN, page 54:
      Yet, I have long tried to unadorn Myself for you. I would toss all the trinkets And lavalieres into a box to escape Worshiping.
    • 2001, Gale Group, Newsmakers - Issue 4, →ISBN, page 281:
      He alerts them to every conceivable pitfall, unadorns them of every emotional bias, slices through every pie in the sky as if it's lemon meringue.
    • 2018, Susan N. Kigul & Hilda J. Twongyeirwe, Wondering and Wandering of Hearts: Poems from Uganda, →ISBN, page 32:
      I will unadorn my neck Tugging away the heavy priceless pearls that have hung around my neck and leave my almost invisible neck bare

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