The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sully \Sul"ly\, v. t. [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.
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of sully English)
Usage examples of "sullying".
Then we should find careless, even corrupt worshipers in our number, sullying the purity of our god.
Then she had to watch her pet fiend perform the ultimate perversion: sullying the sacred Archive.
I hope the spaghetti eaters' Royal Pirate Club fished him up and that he's lying in some Neapolitan inn or other, sullying his fair name and reputation in the company of sots, gamblers and loose women.
There was no coup when Johnson and McNamara were bungling the Vietnam War, no night of the generals when Nixon was sullying the presidency or Clinton was selling it.
Both actions are exertions of power that turn out to involve a sullying Fall into materiality, or more precisely into the abject, addictive dependencies of the flesh.