6 uses
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Definition
to spoil the beauty or purity of something
in various senses, including:
- pollute a pristine lake
- harm a reputation or good name
- damage or disrespect something sacred
- take a person's virginity in a disrespectful way
- Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles, the elephant's brow is majestic.Chapters 79-81 — The Prairie; The Nut; The Pequod Meets the Virgin (7% in)
- He answered no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him.Chapters 10-12 — A Bosom Friend; Nightgown; Biographical (92% in)
- Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honouring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by all manner of defilements.Chapters 22-24 — Merry Christmas; The Lee Shore; The Advocate (59% in)
- As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the mountains, accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous passage in their rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon the plain; even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward through the straits; gradually contracting the wings of their semicircle, and swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic centre.Chapters 85-87 — The Fountain; The Tail; The Grand Armada (58% in)
- And when he glanced upon the green walls of the watery defile in which the ship was then sailing, and bethought him that through that gate lay the route to his vengeance, and beheld, how that through that same gate he was now both chasing and being chased to his deadly end; and not only that, but a herd of remorseless wild pirates and inhuman atheistical devils were infernally cheering him on with their curses;—when all these conceits had passed through his brain, Ahab's brow was left...Chapters 85-87 — The Fountain; The Tail; The Grand Armada (63% in)
- For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when—THERE SHE BLOWS!Chapters 97-99 — The Lamp; Stowing Down & Clearing Up; Doubloon (32% in)
There are no more uses of "defile" in Moby Dick.
Typical Usage
(best examples)