Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To smear; soil.
- v. To ornament in a vulgar, showy fashion.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To daub over; besmear; soil.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive To smear upon; to soil.
- v. transitive To ornament garishly; to overdecorate.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To daub over; to besmear or soil with anything thick and dirty.
WordNet 3.0
- v. spread or daub (a surface)
Etymologies
- From be- (“thoroughly, extensively”) + daub, from Old French dauber ("to plaster, whitewash"), from Latin dealbō ("whiten over, plaster"). (Wiktionary)
Examples
“All this madness yet proceeds from ourselves, the main engine which batters us is from others, we are merely passive in this business: from a company of parasites and flatterers, that with immoderate praise, and bombast epithets, glossing titles, false eulogiums, so bedaub and applaud, gild over many a silly and undeserving man, that they clap him quite out of his wits.”
“Though we smile to ourselves, at least ironically, when parasites bedaub us with false encomiums, as many princes cannot choose but do, Quum tale quid nihil intra se repererint, when they know they come as far short, as a mouse to an elephant, of any such virtues; yet it doth us good.”
“Such things are “but shadowy pretences with which we bedaub each other and repay our mutual debts; but we cannot repay them, but increase rather, the debt owed to that Great Judge who rips our tattered rags from our pudenda and really sees us through and through, right down to our innermost and most secret filth.””
“While we were deliberating upon what was to be done, a hackney coachman, driving softly along, and perceiving us standing by the kennel, came up close to us, and calling, “A coach, master!” by a dexterous management of the reins made his horses stumble in the wet, and bedaub us all over with mud.”
“Some of the natives had really climbed the baobab, and now they were seen rising on all sides, winding along the boughs like reptiles, and advancing slowly but surely, all the time plainly enough discernible, not merely to the eye but to the nostrils, by the horrible odors of the rancid grease with which they bedaub their bodies.”
“Nay, besides these, many societies that make a great figure in the world are reflected on in this book; which caused Rabelais to study to be dark, and even bedaub it with many loose expressions, that he might not be thought to have any other design than to droll; in a manner bewraying his book that his enemies might not bite it.”
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel
“His fair locks, which the Russian was used to wash every morning, he was now bidden to bedaub with grease and flour, while he energetically cursed the black spatterdashes which it took him an hour to button every morning.”
“Kiechel, writing in 1585, says, "Item, the women there are charming, and by nature so mighty pretty as I have scarcely ever beheld, for they do not falsify, paint, or bedaub themselves as in Italy or other places;" yet he confesses (and here is another tradition preserved) "they are somewhat awkward in their style of dress.”
“While she stood there, a little boy having in his hand a stick of molasses candy, with which he had contrived plentifully to bedaub his face, came out of the adjoining room, and surveyed her carefully from head to foot.”
Poor and proud; or, The fortunes of Katy Redburn, a story for young folks
“Some tribes paint the face only; others, on the contrary, do not touch that part; but bedaub with colors their arms, feet, and breasts.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bedaub’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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Belistful
Tubey or not tubey.
belittle, bedazzle, besiege, besmirch, bespeckle, beget, bemoan, befuddle, befriend, become, besot, becloud and 596 more...
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GRE
churlish, polemical, exaltation, docile, esoteric, panache, coercion, restitution, lugubrious, indefatigable, delimit, demarcate and 99 more...
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GRE Words
deftness, insular, patent, normative, abrasive, immutable, inscrutable, invulnerable, imperturbable, irresolute, injudicious, deft and 106 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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trustknot's Words
codger, curmudgeon, amok, torpid, turgid, craven, crepuscule, twilight, spry, mot juste, dross, schadenfreude and 66 more...
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Dictionary.com Words of the Days of 2003
1999 · 2000 · 2001 · 2002 · 2003 · 2004 · 2005 · 2006 · 2007 · 2008
subaltern, itinerant, scuttlebutt, pule, placate, waylay, sub rosa, upbraid, gaucherie, mores, sough, spoony and 43 more...
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Belist
Be- verbs (or verbals).
Words bewet through becalm were gratefully cribbed from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be-bewitch, bedeck, bedaub, become, bewilder, beknight, bereave, believe, behead, besiege, bespeak, befriend and 53 more...
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audreyrenee's Words
Tweets
Looking for tweets for bedaub.

drosselmeier To ornament excessively.
Aug 5, 2008