unadorn

present singular third person unadorns · participle present unadorning · participle past unadorned · past unadorned

1. To add a feature or embellishment that makes something uglier; uglify.

   Sanchez glosses Garrula quo comix with the familiar warning against female loquacity — "silence adorns virgins, chattering unadorns them"

   2000, Dana E. Stewart, Alison Cornish, Sparks and Seeds: Medieval Literature and Its Afterlife

   2 more examples

   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.

   1891, Thomas Anderton, Letters from a Country House, page 57

   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.”

   1921, Pacific Rural Press - Volume 101, page 121

2. To remove the adornments from.

   Yet, I have long tried to unadorn Myself for you. I would toss all the trinkets And lavalieres into a box to escape Worshiping.

   1997, George Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen, Donald Hall, The Paris Review, →ISBN, page 54

   2 more examples

   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.

   2001, Gale Group, Newsmakers - Issue 4, →ISBN, page 281

   I will unadorn my neck Tugging away the heavy priceless pearls that have hung around my neck and leave my almost invisible neck bare

   2018, Susan N. Kigul, Hilda J. Twongyeirwe, Wondering and Wandering of Hearts: Poems from Uganda, →ISBN, page 32