Other forms: adorned, adorning, adorns
To adorn is to make something more beautiful by adding to it. Adorn the walls, adorned with flowers, adorn a page.
It takes with and it is formal and slightly literary. What adorns is added rather than built in, which is what separates adorning from designing. Note adornment, and ornament and ornate, all from the same Latin verb meaning to equip or fit out.
1verbadornTo make something more beautiful by adding to it.
“Paintings of saints adorned the walls of the little chapel.”
adorn is a decorating.
Latin adornare is ad plus ornare, to equip or adorn. Ornament and ornate come from the same fitting out.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂er-
Latin
adōrnō
Middle English
adornen
English, today
adorn
From Middle English adornen, adournen, from Latin adōrnō; from ad- + ōrnō. See adore, ornate. Replaced earlier Middle English aournen (“to adorn”) borrowed from Old French aorner, from the same Latin source.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA