How to Use deface in a Sentence

deface

verb
  • The building was defaced with graffiti.
  • He was fined for defacing public property.
  • That was the last time the sign was defaced.
    — Sara Tenenbaum, CBS News, 12 June 2026
  • Some have gone so far as to deface paintings and tear down murals and signs.
    — Daniel Oyefusi, baltimoresun.com, 2 Aug. 2020
  • Somebody has the right to destroy it, deface it, and tear it down?
    — Marisa Schultz, Fox News, 28 Aug. 2020
  • Many of its icons were missing, and those that remained had been defaced.
    — Ben Hubbard, New York Times, 14 Apr. 2025
  • Black spray paint was used to deface the sculpture and cover text on the pedestal.
    — Marlene Lenthang, ABC News, 25 June 2021
  • Someone had defaced it overnight with paper cutouts and red paint.
    — Shomik Mukherjee, Mercury News, 6 Sep. 2025
  • This was not one website defaced for headlines.
    — Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 1 Mar. 2026
  • Friday's attack is not the first time the picture has been defaced.
    — Deutsche Welle, USA TODAY, 29 May 2018
  • And often food, rather than paint, has been used to deface the cases holding the art.
    — Joel Shannon, USA TODAY, 28 Apr. 2023
  • Someone who should not stumble into this, who should not have to see the grave of her loved one defaced.
    — Literary Hub, 29 Jan. 2026
  • That song plays when Joker and his goons deface an art museum.
    — Darren Franich, EW.com, 12 Jan. 2022
  • The serial number on one of the guns had been defaced, police said.
    — Chicago Tribune, chicagotribune.com, 7 Mar. 2018
  • Still others to deface the tomb with graffiti or even human waste.
    — Constant Méheut, New York Times, 10 Sep. 2022
  • But deflating my tires and defacing my car won't speed up the change, nor will shaming me.
    — Christopher Elliott, USA Today, 24 May 2025
  • By the end of the protest, his property was trespassed and defaced with bloody handprints left on his garage door.
    — Dominic Patten, Deadline, 11 Feb. 2025
  • When the billboard was defaced, the volunteers were shaken up.
    — Sydney Page, Washington Post, 5 Oct. 2023
  • The Forward statue in front of the Capitol was defaced with red paint.
    — Meg Jones, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2 June 2020
  • There are Palestinian flags stuck on most lampposts, with many posters for the contest defaced.
    — Louis Staples, Rolling Stone, 10 May 2024
  • Paintings on the walls depict the Buddhas before they were defaced.
    — Rick Noack, Washington Post, 15 June 2023
  • Outside the Hunter campus, a poster of the hostages being held in Gaza was defaced with swastikas.
    — Emma Green, The New Yorker, 15 Dec. 2023
  • Members of the crowd defaced the vehicle and threw a firecracker inside it, which set it on fire.
    — Jody Serrano / Gizmodo, Quartz, 12 Feb. 2024
  • Within 24 hours it had been defaced, with her skin painted over in pink and the anti-hate message erased.
    — Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN, 14 Aug. 2024
  • The damage consisted of words written on the putting greens and were defaced by the unknown substance.
    — USA TODAY, 30 Sep. 2017
  • There are still no answers as to who or why someone defaced Austin Horsley’s car with words such as f----t.
    — Sheila Vilvens, Cincinnati.com, 27 Oct. 2017
  • Dorris told me — and the lingering evidence of the many attempts to deface it.
    — Connor Towne O'Neill, Daily Intelligencer, 16 Sep. 2017
  • An Ann Arbor home was defaced with a racial slur Monday, police say.
    — Detroit Free Press, 11 Sep. 2019
  • Though Napoleon’s troops were accused of defacing the sphinx nothing of the kind ever occurred.
    — Zenger News, Forbes, 28 Nov. 2023
  • That same day vandals broke windows and defaced a dealership in the San Diego area with swastikas and slogans.
    — Minho Kim, New York Times, 19 Mar. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'deface.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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