The word for today is…
vandalise (verb):
Source : Merriam -Webster
Etymology :At one point in Frodo’s journey in The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien depicts an ancient statue overlooking a crossroads: “Its head was gone, and in its place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted … in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead.” The statue had been vandalised by orcs, but the roots of vandalise have more in common with the name of a Tolkien hero. Vandalise comes from the noun vandal, which was originally capitalised and referred to a member of a Germanic people who lived south of the Baltic Sea and sacked Rome in the year 455 AD. This sacking is what likely led to the use of the lower-case vandal for someone who damages or destroys property. The Late Latin word for such a Vandal was Vandali, a word probably borrowed from a Germanic verb meaning “wend, turn” that also gave rise to the Old English Earendel, the name of a mythological figure that inspired Tolkien’s creation of Eärendil, a mariner who wends his way across the sky of Middle Earth carrying the morning star.
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