From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Sully \Sul"ly\, verb (used with an object) [imp. & p. p. {Sullied}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Sullying}.] [OE. sulien, AS. sylian, fr. sol mire; akin to G. suhle mire, sich, s["u]hlen to wallow, Sw. s["o]la to bemire, Dan. s["o]le, Goth. bisaulijan to defile.] To soil; to dirty; to spot; to tarnish; to stain; to darken; -- used literally and figuratively; as, to sully a sword; to sully a person's reputation.
Statues sullied yet with sacrilegious smoke. --Roscommon.
No spots to sully the brightness of this solemnity. --Atterbury.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
adjective
1: especially of reputation; "the senator's seriously damaged reputation"; "a flyblown reputation"; "a tarnished reputation"; "inherited a spotted name" [syn: {besmirched}, {damaged}, {flyblown}, {spotted}, {stained}, {tainted}, {tarnished}]
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
22 Moby Thesaurus words for "sullied": bedraggled, befouled, besmirched, defiled, dirtied, drabbled, draggled, fouled, impure, indecent, maculate, smirched, smudged, soiled, spotted, stained, tainted, tarnished, unchaste, unclean, unvirginal, unvirtuous
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