deflower

Individual inspiration was a sacred thing, which reality with its rules and prejudices could only spoil and deflower.

From The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 13 by Rudd, John

In the budding of youth, ere wild winds can deflower The shut leaves of man's life, round the germ of his power Yet folded, his life had been earnest.

From Lucile by Meredith, Owen

Or— Defames the sunlight and deflowers the morn.

From Platform Monologues by Tucker, T. G. (Thomas George)

A rose of last October is a poor deflowered thing; but turn to the ice-bound garden-walks where, a month before, the chrysanthemum stood in autumn splendor.

From The Land of Long Ago by Hall, Eliza Calvert

How mistaken and roundabout have been our efforts to reach it by mystic passion, and monastic reverie; how they have deflowered the flesh; how little they have emancipated us!

From The Renaissance Studies in Art and Poetry by Pater, Walter

Whatsoever is fair there have they defiled and deflowered, and they wallow in our fair halls as swine strayed from the dunghill. 

From The Roots of the Mountains; Wherein Is Told Somewhat of the Lives of the Men of Burgdale by Morris, William

They found a great deal of entertainment at the hotel, an enormous wooden structure, for the erection of which it seemed to them that the virgin forests of the West must have been terribly deflowered.

From An International Episode by James, Henry

However, in a field of serious endeavor, a discipline, he was able to see the flower in myriad events deflowered and plucked and beauty in the ugly.

From An Apostate: Nawin of Thais by Sills, Steven (Steven David Justin)

He wrote his mother: "I feel my own life all the more precious and dear in the presence of this deflowering of Europe."

From Time Magazine Archive

More than one wife, she reminded herself, and more than one deflowering, because according to Tilia, the Tartars took several wives, as the Muslims did.

From The Saracen: Land of the Infidel by Shea, Robert