v. [f. BE- 5 + FOUL: a later formation, which ran parallel to BEFILE in ME., and at length displaced it.] trans. To make foul, cover with filth or dirt; often of moral filth; esp. in the proverbial To befoul one’s own nest.
c. 1320. Cast. Love, 1147. Al was his face bi-foulet wt spot.
c. 1430. Syr Gener., 4610. The last he fond Darel Al befouled in the grauel.
1526. Skelton, Magnyf., 885. I befoule his pate.
1726. Amherst, Terræ Filius, v. 22. ’Tis an ill bird which befouls his own nest.
1844. Macaulay, Chatham, Ess. Fox had stumbled in the mire, and had not only been defeated but befouled.
Hence Befouler, Befoulment.
1842. Ld. Jeffrey, in Napier’s Corr. (1879), 388. A befouler of his own nest.
1862. F. Hall, Hindu Philos. Syst., 272. The ignorant … think the blueness of the sky to be the befoulment of ether.
