untune

present singular third person untunes · participle present untuning · participle past untuned · past untuned

1. transitiveTo cause (something) to be out of tune; to make incapable of harmony, or of harmonious action.

   The Trumpet ſhall be heard on high, / The Dead ſhall live, the Living die, / And Muſick ſhall untune the Sky.

   (please specify the title), John Dryden, “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day, 1687. […]”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)

   4 more examples

   How could communities, […] / Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, / But by degree, stand in authentic place? / Take but degree away, untune that string, / And, hark, what discord follows!

   c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii]

   […] do we not see in most collections that much time disunites, untunes, blackens, and by degrees destroys even the best preserved pictures.

   1753, William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, London, Chapter 14, p. 119, footnote

   1800, Thomas Jefferson, letter dated 4 July, 1800, in Henry S. Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson, New York: Derby & Jackson, 1858, Volume 2, Chapter 11, p. 565, Our forte-piano arrived a day or two after you left us. It has been exposed to a great deal of rain, but being well covered was only much untuned.

   The events of the last two or three years, with their record of discontent and rioting among colonial peoples, even more, perhaps, the series of official reports inquiring into the causes of these events, have untuned that old rhapsody in red, white and blue, to which our imperialists delighted to listen, and in whose magic melodies they thought they heard the beat of progress towards social liberty and welfare.

   1940, Leonard Barnes, “The Uprising of Indian and Colonial Peoples”, in Where Stands Democracy?, London: Macmillan, page 63

   Synonyms: detune, distune