Word.ws English Dictionary

defaced

defaced is the simple past and past participle of deface.

Meaning of deface

Verb

deface (third-person singular simple present defaces, present participle defacing, simple past and past participle defaced)

  1. To damage or vandalize something, especially a surface, in a visible or conspicuous manner.
    • 1869: George Eliot, The Legend of Jubal
      That wondrous frame where melody began / Lay as a tomb defaced that no eye cared to scan.
  2. To void or devalue; to nullify or degrade the face value of.
    • He defaced the I.O.U. notes by scrawling "void" over them.
    Synonyms:
    cancel, devalue, nullify, void
  3. (flags) To alter a coat of arms or a flag by adding an element to it.
    • You get the Finnish state flag by defacing the national flag with the state coat of arms placed in the middle of the cross.

Words formed from defaced

Questions about defaced

What is defaced the simple past and past participle of?
Defaced is the simple past and past participle of deface.

Words near defaced in the dictionary

  1. def'n
  2. def'ns
  3. def.
  4. deface
  5. defaceable
  6. defaced
  7. defacement
  8. defacements
  9. defacer
  10. defacers
  11. defaces

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: defaced (page history and authors); deface (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “defaced.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/defaced. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.