brindled
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
An alteration of brinded, probably by association with speckled, grizzled etc.
Pronunciation[edit]
Adjective[edit]
brindled (comparative more brindled, superlative most brindled)
- of a brownish, tawny or gray colour, with streaks or spots; streaky, spotted
- 1725–1726, Homer, “Book 10”, in [William Broome, Elijah Fenton, and Alexander Pope], transl., The Odyssey of Homer. […], London: […] Bernard Lintot, →OCLC:
- The palace in a woody vale they found,
High raised of stone; a shaded space around;
Where mountain wolves and brindled lions roam,
(By magic tamed,) familiar to the dome.
- 1853, Melville, Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!:
- All round me were tokens of a divided empire. The old grass and the new grass were striving together. In the low wet swales the verdure peeped out in vivid green ; beyond, on the mountains, lay light patches of snow, strangely relieved against their russet sides; all the humped hills looked like brindled kine in the shivers.
- 1904, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of Black Peter, Norton, published 2005, page 982:
- And there, in the middle of it was the man himself—his face twisted like a lost soul in torment, and his great brindled beard stuck upwards in his agony.
- 1934, George Orwell, chapter 4, in Burmese Days[1]:
- Some brindled curs hurried from beneath the houses to sniff at Flo […]
Derived terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
streaky, spotted
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Verb[edit]
brindled
- simple past and past participle of brindle
- 1862, Thoreau, Wild Apples: The History of the Apple Tree:
- Apples, these I mean, unspeakably fair [...] - some brindled with deep red streaks like a cow, or with hundreds of fine blood-red rays running regularly from the stem-dimple to the blossom-end, like meridional lines, on a straw-colored ground, [...]