Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To mar the cleanness or luster of; soil or stain.
- v. To defile; taint.
- n. Archaic Something that stains or spots.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To soil; stain; tarnish; defile.
- Figuratively, to stain or tarnish morally.
- To dim; darken.
- To be or become soiled or tarnished.
- n. Soil; tarnish; spot.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To soil; to dirty; to spot; to tarnish; to stain; to darken; -- used literally and figuratively.
- v. To become soiled or tarnished.
- n. Soil; tarnish; stain.
WordNet 3.0
- v. make dirty or spotty, as by exposure to air; also used metaphorically
- v. place under suspicion or cast doubt upon
- v. charge falsely or with malicious intent; attack the good name and reputation of someone
- n. United States painter (born in England) of portraits and historical scenes (1783-1872)
- n. French statesman (1560-1641)
Etymologies
- Probably from French souiller, from Old French; see soil2.
Examples
“July 5th, 2006 at 4: 53 pm seabiscuit says: sully is another one: unless he is getting paid the billion dollars that the ceo of exxon got to deny climate crisis is happening, what’s in it for him? why do it? why lie about the fate of the earth?”
“There was no plot to 'sully' the reputation of Joe Wilson (not that identifying his wife as a CIA employee would accomplish that anyway).”
Beyond the Pale, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“President Nicholas Sarkozy was roundly criticized for losing his cool at the recent annual Agriculture Fair by insulting a constituent who refused to shake his hand (while saying it would "sully" him to be touched by the president.)”
“Most folks know that lots of American stars who would never "sully" their images over here by doing cheap car and makeup ads have no problem doing so overseas obviously, Catherine Zeta-Jones doesn't consider her ad career to be anything to be ashamed of.”
“HEMMER: How do they say "sully" in Russian, by the way?”
“Then something happened at the very end to kind of sully it.”
“The heroic actions of pilot chesley "sully" sullenberger in guiding U.S. Airways flight”
“Chesley "sully" Sullenberger to ditch the plane in the Hudson River in a miracle landing.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sully’.
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Words that look like adverbs but aren't
manly, womanly, ungainly, slovenly, homily, costly, dastardly, family, sparkly, wrinkly, oily, orderly and 69 more...
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Cloudy
with a chance of mizzle
puff, nebulous, fog, overcast, becloud, bedim, taint, befog, dapple, mottle, sully, pother and 83 more...
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words I learned from Firefly
Joss Whedon knows no shame
fancible, foufaraw, frippery, corpsified, shindig, rutting, creepifying, gorram, ironical, sanguine, pantywaist ijit, whinge and 24 more...
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