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

Anagrams

• raundon