bedabble

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Verb

bedabble (bedabbles, present participle bedabbling; past and past participle bedabbled)

1. To dabble about or all over with moisture; make something wet by sprinkling or spattering water, paint, or other liquid on it.
   • circa 1595 William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III, Scene 2,

     Bedabbled with the dew, and torn with briers,

     I can no further crawl, no further go.

   • 1751, John Hill (botanist), The Adventures of Mr. George Edwards, A Creole, London: T. Osborne, Chapter 7, p. 163,

     The rest was fill’d somewhat indiscriminately, with Philosophers, Antiquarians, Mathematicians, and Mechanics. A Scotch Peasant produc’d a New Orrery; a German Mechanic, a Table Fountain contriv’d to play in a Desert, to the great Entertainment, and Bedabbling of every body present […]

   • 1848, Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, Chapter 14,

     A vision of her pale, sweet face, with her bright hair all bedabbled with gore, seemed to float constantly before his aching eyes.

   • 1912, Charles Egbert Craddoc (pseudonym of Mary Noailles Murfree), “The Crucial Moment” in The Raid of the Guerilla and Other Stories, Philadelphia: Lippincott,

     […] the weapon in Jeffrey's hand was discharged in his latest impulse of action after he fell to the floor, the blood gushing from a wound that crimsoned all the delicate whiteness of his shirt-front and bedabbled his snowy hair and beard.

Translations

• Russian: бры́згать

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