defile
Part of speech: verb
noun
Morphological type: derivation
Topics: government
lifestyle
military
politics
religion
war
Etymology: From Late Middle English defilen (“to make dirty, befoul; rape; abuse; destroy; injure; oppress”) [and other forms], a variant of defoulen (“to make dirty, defile, pollute; have sexual intercourse with; rape; etc.”) (compare also defoilen). Defoulen is a blend of Middle English foulen (“to make dirty, soil, pollute”) (from the adjective foul (“dirty, rotten, stinking, corrupt, sinful, guilty”) and Old English fūlian (“to decay”)), and Old French defoler, defouler (“to trample, crush; destroy”), from de- (intensifying prefix) + foler, fouler, fuller (“to trample, tread on; mistreat, oppress, destroy”) (from Vulgar Latin fullāre (“to full (make cloth denser and firmer by soaking, beating, and pressing)”), from Latin fullō (“person who fulls cloth, fuller”); further etymology uncertain, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₃- (“to blow; to inflate, swell; to bloom, flower”) or Etruscan 𐌘𐌖𐌋𐌖 (φulu)). The English word is analysable as de- + file (“to corrupt; defile”).
The Middle English word defilen was probably formed from defoulen on the analogy of befilen (“to make dirty, befoul; corrupt; violate one's chastity; desecrate; slander”) and befoulen (“to make dirty, befoul; violate one's chastity; vilify”), respectively from Old English befȳlan (“to befoul, pollute, defile, make filthy”) (compare also Middle English filen (“to make foul, impure, or unclean, pollute; pollute morally or spiritually; desecrate, profane; have sexual intercourse with; rape; etc.”)) and foulen (“to make dirty, pollute; become dirty; defecate; deface or deform; pollute morally or spiritually; damage, injure; destroy; treat unfairly, oppress; tread on, trample”). Filen and foulen are respectively from Old English fȳlan (“to befoul, defile, pollute”) and Old English fūlian (“to foul”), from Proto-West Germanic *fūlijan (“to make dirty, befoul”) and *fūlēn (“to become foul, decay”), both ultimately from Proto-Germanic *fūlaz (“dirty, foul; rotten”), from Proto-Indo-European *puH- (“foul; rotten”). See foul.
Cognates
* German Low German befulen (“to defile, sully”)
* Dutch bevuilen (“to defile, soil”)
* Scots befile (“to befoul, dirty”)
* West Frisian befûjle (“to soil”)
Base: file
Affixes: de-
Inflected forms:
form: defiles
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: defiling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: defiled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: defiled
pos: verb
tags: past
form: defiles
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: defilé
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: defilee
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: défilé
pos: noun
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: To make (someone or something) physically dirty or unclean; to befoul, to soil.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: […] It is an euil birde that defiles his owne neſt, […]
I have ſowed ſackcloth vpon my ſkin, and defiled my horne in the duſt.
Spain might now boast that the stain of heresy no longer defiled the hem of her garment. But at what a price was this purchased!
At mankind's feast, I take my place / In solemn, sanctimonious state, / And have the air of saying grace / While I defile the dinner plate.
“That's only dirt—it will brush off.” But he looked at me with his haggard hopeless eyes and said— “It is mud. Black, slimy, horrible mud. I am defiled.”
gloss: To make (someone or something) morally impure or unclean; to corrupt, to tarnish.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: [T]here is no thynge with outt a man that can diffyle hym when hitt entreth in to hym⸝ but thoo thyngꝭ [things] which procede out of a mã [man] are thoſe which defyle a mã.
Chr[istian]. VVhy, I tro you did not conſent to her deſires? / Faith[full]. No, not to defile my ſelf; for I remembred an old vvriting that I had ſeen, vvhich ſaith, Her ſteps take hold of Hell. [Proverbs 5:5] So I ſhut mine eyes, becauſe I vvould not be bevvitched with her looks: [Job 31:1] then ſhe railed on me, and I vvent my vvay.
gloss: To act inappropriately towards or vandalize (something sacred or special); to desecrate, to profane.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: To urinate on someone’s grave is an example of a way to defile it.
And all yͤ chiefe amonge the preſtes, and the people, multiplyed their ſynnes, acordinge to all the abhominacions of the Heythen, and dyfyled the houſe of the LORDE, which he had ſanctified at Jeruſalem.
Remember them, O my God, becauſe they haue defiled the Prieſthood, and the couenant of the Prieſthood, and of the Leuites.
The vote in the Bundestag (parliament) on Thursday makes defiling foreign flags equal to the crime of defiling the German flag.
gloss: To cause (something or someone) to become ritually unclean.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: What ſo euer crepeth vpon earth, ſhall be an abhominacion vnto you, and ſhal not be eaten. […] Make not youre ſoules abhominable, and defyle you not in them, to ſtayne youre ſelues: for I am the LORDE youre God. Therfore ſhal ye ſanctifie youre ſelues, that ye maye be holy, for I am holy. And ye ſhal not defyle youreſelues on eny maner of crepynge beeſt, that crepeth vpon earth: […]
That which dieth of it ſelfe, or is torne with beaſts, hee ſhall not eate to defile himſelfe therewith: I am the Lord.
gloss: To deprive (someone) of their sexual chastity or purity, often not consensually; to deflower, to rape.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
transitive
examples: The serial rapist kidnapped and defiled a six-year-old girl.
And when Shechem the ſonne of Hamor the Hiuite, prince of the countrey ſaw her [Dinah], he tooke her, and lay with her, and defiled her.
VVhat Tongue can ſpeak the reſtleſs Monarch's VVoes; / VVhen GOD, and Nathan vvere declar'd his Foes? / VVhen ev'ry Object his Offence revil'd, / The Husband murder'd, and the VVife defil'd, / The Parent's Sins impreſs'd upon the dying Child?
The ſecond offence, more immediately affecting the perſonal ſecurity of individuals, relates to the female part of his majeſty's ſubjects; being that of their forcible abduction and marriage; which is vulgarly called ſtealing an heireſs. For by ſtatute 3 Hen. VII. c. 2. it is enacted, that if any perſon ſhall for lucre take any woman, maid, widow, or wife, having ſubtance either in goods or lands, or being heir apparent to her anceſtors, contrary to her will; and afterwards ſhe be married to ſuch miſdoer, or by his conſent to others, or defiled; ſuch perſon, and all his acceſſories, ſhall be deemed principal felons: […]
gloss: To dishonour (someone).
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
transitive
examples: Come recreant, come thou childe, / Ile vvhippe thee vvith a rodde. He is defil'd, / That dravves a ſvvord on thee.
[H]is Character may be Defiled by ſuch Men and dirty Hands as thoſe of the Obſervator, or ſuch as employ him, […]
gloss: To become dirty or unclean.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
obsolete
examples: [Y]ou vvill find if you do not daily ſvveep you houſes, they vvill defile; and the cob-vvebs they vvill grovv; the Spiders vvill be at vvork; and though your hearts be never ſo pure, Spiders vvill creep into them, […]
gloss: To cause uncleanliness; specifically, to pass feces; to defecate.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
obsolete
examples: There is a thing Harry, vvhich thou haſt often heard of, and it is knovvne to many in our land by the name of pitch. This pitch (as ancient vvriters do report) doth defile, ſo doth the companie thou keepeſt: […]
gloss: A narrow passage or way (originally (military), one which soldiers could only march through in a single file or line), especially a narrow gorge or pass between mountains.
pos: noun
tags: also
figuratively
examples: VVe had one dangerous Place to paſs, vvhich our Guide told us, if there vvere any more VVolves in the Country, vve ſhould find them there; and this vvas in a ſmall Plain, ſurrounded vvith VVoods on every Side, and a long narrovv Defile or Lane, vvhich vve vvere to paſs to get through the VVood, and then vve ſhould come to the Village vvhere vve vvere to lodge.
Conſtantine had taken poſt in a defile about half a mile in breadth, between a ſteep hill and a deep moraſs, and in that ſituation he ſteadily expected and repulſed the firſt attack of the enemy.
[…] I roam / By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles / Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home; […]
[T]hese granite hills, thousands of feet high, were impracticable for heavy troops: the passes through them being formidable defiles, very costly to assault or cover.
All three parallel valleys of the Llynvi, Garw and Ogmore are much the same in physical character: the lower reaches are wooded and not unattractive, but as the railway climbs on ever-steepening grades, the hills on either hand grow barer and closer together, while in all respects the scene becomes more sombre, with the terraced, slate-roofed colliery towns and the road, railway and river all struggling for space in the narrowing defiles.
The next morning the enemy were on the march before him, seized the defiles, blocked the fords of the rivers, destroyed the bridges, and sent out cavalry to patrol the open ground, so as to oppose the Athenians at every step as they retreated.
On the final stages of the run from Inverness Class 5 4-6-0 No. 45066 winds its train through narrow rock defiles alongside Loch Carron at the approach to Kyle of Lochalsh.
"For the first time in 125 years a powerful enemy was now established across the narrow waters of the English Channel. ... Many people must have been bewildered by the innumerable activities all around them. They could understand the necessity for wiring and mining the beaches, the anti-tank obstacles at the defiles, the concrete pillboxes at the cross-roads, the intrusions into their houses to fill an attic with sandbags, on to their golf-courses or most fertile fields and gardens to burrow out some wide anti-tank ditch." So wrote Winston Churchill in Their Finest Hour, published in 1949.
gloss: An act of marching in files or lines.
pos: noun
tags: also
figuratively
gloss: A single file of soldiers; (by extension) any single file.
pos: noun
tags: also
figuratively
Related words: befile
befoul
file
filth
foul
full
fuller
defilade
enfilade
enfile
glen
defilement
Derived words: defilable
defilement
defiler
defiling
defilingly
Translations: