Definition of "deface" [de•face]

• To mar or spoil the appearance or surface of; disfigure. (verb-transitive)
• To impair the usefulness, value, or influence of. (verb-transitive)
• Obsolete To obliterate; destroy. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "a collision course with nature – to deface or not to deface, that is the question."
• "Lots of Christians purposely "deface" their own Bibles."
• "It will be observed, that the word "deface," employed in this statute, actually covers the marking of margins by any reader, all such marking constituting a defacement within the meaning of the law."