bedabble

English

Etymology

From be- +‎ dabble.

Verb

bedabble (third-person singular simple present bedabbles, present participle bedabbling, simple 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.
   • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:

     Bedabbled with the dew, and torn with briers,
     I can no further crawl, no further go.

   • 1751, John Hill, chapter 7, in The Adventures of Mr. George Edwards, A Creole‎^[1], London: T. Osborne, page 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, chapter 14, in Mary Barton‎^[2]:

     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,^[3]

     […] 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

to make wet

• Bulgarian: изпръсквам (bg) (izprǎskvam), нацапвам (bg) (nacapvam)
• Finnish: kastella (fi)
• Russian: бры́згать (ru) impf (brýzgatʹ), забры́згивать (ru) impf (zabrýzgivatʹ), забры́згать (ru) pf (zabrýzgatʹ)