Sully vs Demean - What's the difference?
sully | demean |
to soil or stain; to dirty
* Roscommon
to damage or corrupt
* Atterbury
To become soiled or tarnished.
* Francis Bacon
To debase; to lower; to degrade.
* Thackeray
To humble, humble oneself; to humiliate.
To mortify.
To manage; to conduct; to treat.
* Milton
To conduct; to behave; to comport; followed by the reflexive pronoun.
* Shakespeare
* Clarendon
(archaic) Management; treatment.
* Spenser
(archaic) Behavior; conduct; bearing; demeanor.
* 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , V.5:
*:‘When thou hast all this doen, then bring me newes / Of his demeane […].’
* West
As verbs the difference between sully and demean
is that sully is to soil or stain; to dirty while demean is to debase; to lower; to degrade or demean can be to manage; to conduct; to treat.As a noun demean is
(archaic) management; treatment or demean can be demesne.sully
English
Alternative forms
* (l)Verb
- He did not wish to sully his hands with gardening.
- statues sullied yet with sacrilegious smoke
- He did not wish to sully his reputation with an ill-mannered comment.
- no spots to sully the brightness of this solemnity
- Silvering will sully and canker more than gilding.
demean
English
Etymology 1
(1595) From . Compare English (m).Verb
(en verb)- Her son would demean himself by a marriage with an artist's daughter.
Synonyms
* debase * lower * degradeEtymology 2
From (etyl) .Verb
(en verb)- [Our] clergy have with violence demeaned the matter.
- They have demeaned themselves / Like men born to renown by life or death.
- They answered that they should demean themselves according to their instructions.
Noun
- vile demean and usage bad
- with grave demean and solemn vanity