To spoil or damage the appearance or shape of something.
From Old French disfigurer, from dis- (opposite of) + figure (shape). The Latin root figura meant 'form' or 'shape,' so defigure literally means to undo or destroy the form.
Medieval clerics would defigure heretical texts by scratching out passages, creating 'palimpsests' that modern scholars can now read with technology—censorship accidentally preserved history!
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