Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To cover or smear with a soft adhesive substance such as plaster, grease, or mud.
  • intransitive verb To apply paint to (a surface) with hasty or crude strokes.
  • intransitive verb To apply with quick or crude strokes.
  • intransitive verb To apply paint or coloring with crude, unskillful strokes.
  • intransitive verb To make crude or amateurish paintings.
  • intransitive verb To daub a sticky material.
  • noun The act or a stroke of daubing.
  • noun A soft adhesive coating material such as plaster, grease, or mud.
  • noun Matter daubed on.
  • noun A crude, amateurish painting or picture.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To smear with soft adhesive matter; plaster; cover or coat with mud, slime, or other soft substance.
  • To soil; defile; besmear.
  • Hence To paint ignorantly, coarsely, or badly.
  • To give a specious appearance to; patch up; disguise; conceal.
  • To dress or adorn without taste; deck vulgarly or ostentatiously; load as with finery.
  • noun In coloring enameled leather, a thick black substance put on as a first coat to fill the surface in preparation for the final coloring.
  • noun A cheap kind of mortar; plaster made of mud.
  • noun A viscous, adhesive application; a smear.
  • noun A daubing or smearing stroke.
  • noun A coarse, inartistic painting.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To smear; to play the flatterer.
  • transitive verb To smear with soft, adhesive matter, as pitch, slime, mud, etc.; to plaster; to bedaub; to besmear.
  • transitive verb To paint in a coarse or unskillful manner.
  • transitive verb To cover with a specious or deceitful exterior; to disguise; to conceal.
  • transitive verb rare To flatter excessively or glossy.
  • transitive verb rare To put on without taste; to deck gaudily.
  • noun A viscous, sticky application; a spot smeared or daubed; a smear.
  • noun (Paint.) A picture coarsely executed.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Excrement or clay used as a bonding material in construction (compare wattle and daub).
  • noun A soft coating of mud, plaster, etc.
  • noun A crude or amateurish painting.
  • verb To apply something to a surface in hasty or crude strokes.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb cover (a surface) by smearing (a substance) over it
  • verb apply to a surface
  • noun an unskillful painting
  • verb coat with plaster
  • noun a blemish made by dirt
  • noun material used to daub walls

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English dauben, from Old French dauber, from Latin dēalbāre, to whitewash : dē-, intensive pref.; see de– + albus, white; see albho- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French dauber ("whitewash")

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Examples

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  • In architecture, mud coating-like plaster on a panel.

    August 25, 2008