misadorn

mis- +‎ adorn

misadorn (third-person singular simple present misadorns, present participle misadorning, simple past and past participle misadorned)

1. To adorn badly; to embellish with unflattering adornments.
   • 1768, The Lyric Muse Revived in Europe, page 95:

     Let him not set many notes to any one syllable (notwithstanding that in former times it hath been a favourite fashion;) but let his music be such that the words may be clearly, and obviously understood, which will ever be the happy effect, when componsers do not stray from the modesty of nature, into the faulty pursuit of novel graces to misadorn her.

   • 1916, Alabama Bird Day Book, page 84:

     Often when riding on subway of trolley the writer amuses himself by making a mental list of the birds which misadorn the hats of the women passengers.

   • 2000, Betram D. Wolfe, The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, page 207:

     The attackers of Diego Rivera told us that they would not exercise violent direct action against the paintings of Diego Rivera which misadorn the walls of the Secretariat of Public Education in view of the fact that such action would not give more relief than that which time is exercising on the paintings, which are visibly suffering a great deterioration, thats, according to the opinion of the future architects, to the deficiences of the encaustic process in which they were executed.

• morindas