Adorn definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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Definitions (12)

American Heritage Dictionary (2)

transitive verb To lend beauty to: "the pale mimosas that adorned the favorite promenade” (Ronald Firbank).
transitive verb To enhance or decorate with or as if with ornaments: "[He] requires the presence of titles to legitimate and adorn . . . his imperfect status” (Cynthia Ozick).

Century Dictionary (4)

To beautify or decorate; increase or lend beauty or attractiveness to, as by dress or ornaments; hence, in general, to render pleasing, or more pleasing or attractive; embellish. A bride adorneth herself with her jewels. Isa. lxi. 10. Virtue adorn'd his mind, triumph his brow. Ford, Fame's Memorial. He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale. Johnson, Van. of Hum. Wishes, 222.
To display the beauty or excellence of: as, to “adorn the doctrine of God,” Tit. ii. 10. Synonyms Adorn, Ornament, Decorate, Embellish, Beautify, Deck, Array, grace, garnish, bedeck, set off. (See decorate.) The italicized words, except deck and array, are expressive of the attempt to add or increase beauty. Adorn has the most nobleness and spirituality; it is the least external. Garments that adorn a woman seem a part of her personality and bring out her comeliness; many virtues adorn his character; the hall was adorned with the portraits of their ancestors. In these examples, no other word in the list is high enough or near enough to take the place of adorn. Ornament and decorate express the addition of something external, which still preserves its separate character and may perhaps be easily removed. Ornament, as kindred to adorn, is nearer to its meaning; decorate expresses that which is more showy: ornamented with pictures; the bare walls were decorated for the occasion with flags and wreaths. Both express the adding of beauty to that which was deficient in it before. Embellish implies previous beauty, to which luster or brilliancy is added by something which perhaps becomes a part of the original: as, a book embellished with plates; a style embellished with figures of speech. The word is sometimes used of over-ornamentation. Beautify is the most direct in its expression of the general idea. Of the first five words, decorate is the least often used figuratively; decorated speech is speech in which the ornaments have no vital connection or harmony with the thought, so that they seem merely ornamental. Deck is to cover, and hence to cover in a way to please the eye: as, decked with flowers. Array is used especially of covering with splendid dress, the meaning being extended from persons to animals, etc.: the fields were arrayed in green. But that which fairest is, but few behold, Her mind adornd with vertues manifold. Spenser, Sonnets, xv. A whimsical fashion now prevailed among the ladies, of strangely ornamenting their faces with abundance of black patches cut into grotesque forms. I. D' Israeli, Curios, of Lit., I. 311. Ivy climbs the crumbling hall To decorate decay. Bailey, Festus. We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man's life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom, and unity. Emerson, Friendship. Nature has laid out all her art in beautifying the face. Addison, Spectator, No. 98. And, with new life from sun and kindly showers, With beauty deck the meadow and the hill. Jones Very, Poems, p. 90. Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these [lilies]. Mat. vi. 29.
Ornament. Her brest all naked, as nett yvory Without adorne of gold or silver bright. Spenser, F. Q., III. xii. 20.

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We have a vast continent to subdue and to adorn, and we need the aid of millions more of willing hands to accomplish the magnificent enterprise. — Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854)
The station I ask you to adorn will be a private one. — The Mayor of Troy
I will not adorn, as a modern Cleopatra, the triumphal entry of the modern Augustus. — Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia
For, the moment we make anything useful thoroughly, it is a law of nature that we shall be pleased with ourselves, and with the thing we have made; and become desirous therefore to adorn or complete it, in some dainty way, with finer art expressive of our pleasure And the point I wish chiefly to bring before you to-day is this close and healthy connection of the fine arts with material use; but I must first try briefly to put in clear light the function of art in giving Form to truth 98. — Lectures on Art Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870
We promise to follow those courses which shall adorn the royal name. — The Letters of Cassiodorus Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator

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untidily · satyric · half-bound · laurel-crowned · colonnaded · leather-clad · thyrsus · leghorn · gold-embroidered · monochromatic · ungraced · a-gleam

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (4)

American Heritage Dictionary (1)

Middle English adornen, from Old French adourner, from Latin adōrnāre : ad-, ad- + ōrnāre, to decorate; see ar- in Indo-European roots.

Century Dictionary (3)

from Middle English adornen, adournen, from Old French adorner, adourner (earlier Middle English aournen, aornen, from Old French aourner, aürner, aörner), modern F. adorner = Spanish Portuguese adornar = Italian adornare, from Latin adornare, from ad, to, + ornare, deck, beautify: see ornate.
= Italian Spanish adorno, ornament; from the verb.
from Italian adorno, short form of adornato (= Spanish Portuguese adornado), past participle of adornare, from Latin adornare: see adornate, adorn, v.

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