Definition

1. Verb:
   • To deprive of virginity: To have sexual intercourse with someone, especially a woman, for the first time, thereby ending their virginity. This usage often carries connotations of taking or violating innocence.
   • To make imperfect; to mar or spoil: To ruin the purity, perfection, or beauty of something. This is a more literary or figurative sense.

Usage Examples

• Verb (deprive of virginity):
  • The novel's villain sought to deflower the young heroine.
  • Historical accounts sometimes brutally note when conquering armies deflowered the daughters of a captured city.
• Verb (make imperfect):
  • The vandals deflowered the pristine landscape with their garbage.
  • Time and neglect had deflowered the grandeur of the once-magnificent palace.

Advanced Usage

• The term is often used in historical, literary, or legal contexts. In modern everyday English regarding consensual first sexual experience, terms like "lose one's virginity" are more neutral and common.
• The figurative sense ("to mar") is now rare and considered archaic or highly literary.

Variants and Related Words

• Defloration (noun): The act of deflowering.
  • The theme of defloration is common in Gothic literature.

Synonyms

• Violate: To break, infringe, or transgress; often used in the context of sexual assault.
• Ravish: To seize and carry off by force; to rape. (Archaic or literary)
• Despoil: To strip of possessions, things of value, etc.; to rob, plunder, or ruin. (Closer to the figurative "mar" sense)

Notes on Meaning and Usage

• The primary and most common contemporary meaning relates to the loss of virginity. Due to its often violent or non-consensual connotations in this sense, the word can be considered offensive, outdated, or misogynistic when applied to a person.
• The secondary meaning ("to mar") is extremely rare in modern usage.

Verb

1. make imperfect
   • nothing marred her beauty
2. deprive of virginity
   • This dirty old man deflowered several young girls in the village