DISFIGURE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does disfigure mean? 

• DISFIGURE (verb)
  The verb DISFIGURE has 1 sense:

1. mar or spoil the appearance of

  Familiarity information: DISFIGURE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DISFIGURE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they disfigure    ... he / she / it disfigures   
Past simple: disfigured   
Past participle: disfigured   
-ing form: disfiguring   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Mar or spoil the appearance of

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Synonyms:

blemish; deface; disfigure

Context example:

The vandals disfigured the statue

Hypernyms (to "disfigure" is one way to...):

deflower; impair; mar; spoil; vitiate (make imperfect)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "disfigure"):

mangle; maul (injure badly by beating)

mark; pit; pock; scar (mark with a scar)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Derivation:

disfiguration (an appearance that has been spoiled or is misshapen)

disfigurement (the act of damaging the appearance or surface of something)

disfigurement (an appearance that has been spoiled or is misshapen)

 Context examples 

DFT1 causes grotesque and disfiguring facial tumours, which usually kill affected individuals.

(Human anti-cancer drugs could help treat transmissible cancers in Tasmanian devils, University of Cambridge)

The mucocutaneous form disfigures the face of affected patients by spreading through mucous membranes of the nose, mouth and throat, and may eventually lead to death from secondary infection.

(Study uncovers cause of aggressive leishmaniasis strain, SciDev.Net)

The affected areas of skin can be restrictive and disfiguring.

(Localized Scleroderma, NCI Thesaurus)

The late skin lesions may cause destruction of bones and cartilage and produce disfiguring changes.

(Pinta, NCI Thesaurus)

One eye was disfigured and sightless from a wound, but the other looked from my father to myself with the quickest and shrewdest of expressions.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A surgeon with advanced training in treating disfiguring conditions.

(Plastic surgeon, NCI Thesaurus)

He was always hideous, but he looks more awful than ever now, for he appears to have had an accident and he is much disfigured.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

When the dwarf saw that he screamed out: Is that civil, you toadstool, to disfigure a man’s face?

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Would you wish me to shave my head and black my face, or disfigure myself with a burn, or a scald, or something of that sort?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

During the first twelve hours I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments; I saw her disfigured and discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)