The Only Use of
sully
in
A Prayer for Owen Meany
- But the faculty adviser to The Grave was an Owen Meany supporter; Mr. Early—that deeply flawed thespian who brought to every role he was given in The Gravesend Players an overblown and befuddled sense of Learlike doom—cried that he would defend the "unsullied genius" of The Voice, if necessary, "to the death."†
p. 300.9unsullied = unspoiled and undamagedstandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unsullied means not and reverses the meaning of sullied. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
Definitions:
-
(1)
(sully as in: sully her reputation) to soil or stain -- especially to damage a reputation that was previously unblemished
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Less commonly, sully can also mean to spoil or make dirty.