defeature
English edit
Pronunciation edit
Etymology 1 edit
Noun edit
defeature
- Defeat, overthrow, ruin.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- This mischiefe framd, for their first loves defeature
Etymology 2 edit
Verb edit
defeature (third-person singular simple present defeatures, present participle defeaturing, simple past and past participle defeatured)
Noun edit
defeature (plural defeatures)
- Disfigurement, defacement, deformation.
- c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:
- What ruins are in me that can be found, / By him not ruin'd? then is he the ground / of my defeatures.
- 1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXIV, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 9:
- But no discovery was made, for no volley of reproach was uttered, and could they have looked in their mother's face they might have seen that strange defeatures were written there.