Sully

How to spell sully

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sully

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sully mean?

1. verbTo damage or stain the purity, reputation, or good name of someone or something.

Sully in a sentence

• A single dishonest deal can sully a company's hard-won reputation.

• She refused to sully her family's good name by repeating the gossip.

Where does sully come from?

Language of origin: French

The exact origin of sully is genuinely debated, which is why its confidence here is only moderate. Most scholars link it to the Old French souiller, meaning 'to soil or make dirty', a verb tied to the idea of a pig wallowing in mud. Others trace it to the native Old English sylian, 'to make muddy or foul', which grew from sol, a word for soft mud or a muddy wallow. Whichever path it took, the word surfaced in English in the sixteenth century already carrying both the literal sense of staining a surface and the figurative sense of staining a name or reputation. That figurative meaning, tarnishing someone's honour, is now the dominant one, and the close family resemblance to the everyday word 'soil' helps explain why both the spelling and the meaning feel so familiar.

How the word is built

• sull- (to soil, stain)
• -y (verb-forming ending)