sully

verb sul·ly \ ˈsə-lē \

|Updated on: 10 Jun 2018

Examples: sully in a Sentence

Editor's Note: Did You Know?

Definition of sully

sullied; sullying

transitive verb

: to make soiled or tarnished : defile

See sully defined for English-language learners

See sully defined for kids

sully was our Word of the Day on 05/18/2014. Hear the podcast!

Examples of sully in a Sentence

people that sully our state parks with their trash
a once-gleaming marble interior sullied by decades of exposure to cigarette smoke

Recent Examples of sully from the Web

His miss was an improbability—the kind of result that sullies good process.

— rob mahoney, SI.com, "LeBron James Made the Right Play And It Cost the Cavs Game 1," 1 June 2018
The implication was clear: Carrie will be taken down a peg or two — again and again, and professional success was always suspect (a mud puddle ready to sully a princess tutu).

— rhonda garelick, The Cut, "Carrie Bradshaw’s Tutu Paradox," 1 June 2018
Corporate public-relations consultants in London, where Vedanta’s main holding company is based, have depressingly ample experience in helping commodities firms whose reputations risk being sullied by such police violence.

— The Economist, "Shootings in India tarnish Vedanta’s reputation," 31 May 2018
Winged Foot massacred the field in 1974 — nobody broke par in the first round and 7-over won it — and evil pin placements on two greens sullied the 2001 tournament at Southern Hills.

— marcus hayes, Philly.com, "USGA says No. 7 at Shinnecock won't happen in this year's U.S. Open. But what will? | Marcus Hayes," 22 May 2018
Mario also believes that the pearl’s reputation has been unfairly sullied.

— michael lapointe, The Atlantic, "The Twisted Tale of the World’s Largest Pearl," 11 May 2018
This is a moment in history that has sullied the reputation of the FBI and the Department of Justice, and deservedly so.

— the washington post, NOLA.com, "Trump reportedly hires conspiracy theorist Joe diGenova for legal team: What he's said," 20 Mar. 2018
There was sportsmanship throughout, unlike some games in the past 15 years when in-game fighting among players sullied the game’s reputation of raising funds for charities and athletes coming together for a common cause.

— joe davidson, sacbee, "Optimist All-Star football game shows life but can still grow | The Sacramento Bee," 28 Jan. 2018
Cook also tried to distance Apple from the dark clouds that have sullied that techno-optimism in recent years.

— david z. morris, Fortune, "Tim Cook's Duke Commencement Speech Emphasizes Tech Privacy," 13 May 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'sully.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

The spelling of sully has shifted several times since it was sylian in Old-English, but its meaning has remained essentially the same: "to soil." If you're looking for other words that mean "to soil," you can try out befoul, besmirch, blacken, foul, grime, stain, or simply dirty. You might wonder if the English word sullen (meaning "gloomy or morose") is a relative of sully, and the answer is no. Sullen traces back by way of Anglo- and Old French to Latin solus, meaning "alone."