de·face (d -f s )tr.v. de·faced, de·fac·ing, de·fac·es 1. To mar or spoil the appearance or surface of; disfigure. 2. To impair the usefulness, value, or influence of. 3. Obsolete To obliterate; destroy.
[Middle English defacen, from Old French desfacier : des-, de- + face, face; see face.]
de·facea·ble adj. de·facement n. de·facer n. |
Translations defaced [dɪˈfeɪst] adj [ voucher, document] → raturé(e)
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| The faces, shriveled and defaced, bore no likeness to the faces of men. This was the trunk of a large wooden doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of cheeks; but was now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering. It is one of the bitterest apportionments of a lot of slavery, that the negro, sympathetic and assimilative, after acquiring, in a refined family, the tastes and feelings which form the atmosphere of such a place, is not the less liable to become the bond-slave of the coarsest and most brutal,--just as a chair or table, which once decorated the superb saloon, comes, at last, battered and defaced, to the barroom of some filthy tavern, or some low haunt of vulgar debauchery. |