daub
See also: Daub
English
WOTD – 27 March 2009
Etymology
From Middle English daub (noun), from Middle English dauben (“to plaster or whitewash; cover with clay; bespatter”, verb), from Old Northern French dauber (“to whitewash; plaster”), of uncertain origin. Probably from Latin dealbāre (“to whiten thoroughly”).
Noun
daub (countable and uncountable, plural daubs)
- Excrement or clay used as a bonding material in construction (compare wattle and daub).
- A soft coating of mud, plaster, etc.
- A crude or amateurish painting.
Translations
soft coating of mud, plaster etc
crude or amateurish painting
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked
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Verb
daub (third-person singular simple present daubs, present participle daubing, simple past and past participle daubed)
- (intransitive, transitive) To apply (something) to a surface in hasty or crude strokes.
- Synonyms: apply, coat, cover, plaster, smear
- The artist just seemed to daub on paint at random and suddenly there was a painting.
- 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Exodus 2.3,
- […] she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch […]
- 1865, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, Chapter 16,
- […] Mrs. Gibson could not well come up to the girl’s bedroom every night and see that she daubed her face and neck over with the cosmetics so carefully provided for her.
- 1869, Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Chapter 26,
- An artist friend fitted her out with his castoff palettes, brushes, and colors, and she daubed away, producing pastoral and marine views such as were never seen on land or sea.
- 1940, Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, London: Jonathan Cape, Chapter 15, p. 185,
- […] as he watched, [the motorcar] came up the snow-covered road, green and brown painted, in broken patches of daubed color, the windows blued over so that you could not see in […]
- 1952, Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt, Norton, 2004, Chapter 3, p. 39,
- Blood was running to her shoe, and her stocking was torn in a jagged hole. […] she wet toilet paper and daubed until the red was gone from her stocking, but the red kept coming.
- 1969, Chaim Potok, The Promise, New York: Fawcett Crest, Book 3, Chapter 16, p. 379,
- They were expecting to see me, she said, daubing paint on the canvas and stepping back to gauge the effect.
- 2007, Tan Twan Eng, The Gift of Rain, New York: Weinstein Books, Book 1, Chapter 21, p. 226,
- Cylindrical lanterns daubed in red writing hung at intervals across wooden beams […]
- (transitive) To paint (a picture, etc.) in a coarse or unskilful manner.
- 1695, John Dryden (translator), Observations on the Art of Painting by Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy, London: W. Rogers, p. 201,
- […] a lame, imperfect Piece, rudely daub’d over with too little Reflection and too much haste.
- 1724, Isaac Watts, Logick: Or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth, London: John Clark and Richard Hett, 2nd edition, Part 2, Chapter 3, Section 1, p. 189,
- If a Picture is daub’d with many bright and glaring Colours, the vulgar Eye admires it as an excellent Piece […]
- 1826, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, An Essay on Mind, Book I, in The Earlier Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1826-1833, London: Bartholomew Robson, 1878, pp. 25-26,
- If some gay picture, vilely daubed, were seen
- With grass of azure, and a sky of green,
- Th’impatient laughter we’d suppress in vain,
- And deem the painter jesting, or insane.
- 1964, Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man, Vintage, 2010,
- […] this stretch of the shore is still filthy with trash; high-school gangs still daub huge scandalous words on its beach-wall, and seashells are still less easy to find here than discarded rubbers.
- 1695, John Dryden (translator), Observations on the Art of Painting by Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy, London: W. Rogers, p. 201,
- (transitive, obsolete) To cover with a specious or deceitful exterior; to disguise; to conceal.
- c. 1592, William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act III, Scene 5,
- So smooth he daub’d his vice with show of virtue,
- 1820, John Clare, “The Universal Epitaph” in Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, London: Taylor & Hessey, p. 91,
- No flattering praises daub my stone,
- My frailties and my faults to hide;
- c. 1592, William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act III, Scene 5,
- (transitive, obsolete) To flatter excessively or grossly.
- 1766, Tobias Smollett, Travels through France and Italy, London: R. Baldwin, Volume 2, Letter 28, p. 73,
- I can safely say, however, that without any daubing at all, I am, very sincerely, Your very affectionate, humble servant,
- 1766, Tobias Smollett, Travels through France and Italy, London: R. Baldwin, Volume 2, Letter 28, p. 73,
- (transitive, obsolete) To put on without taste; to deck gaudily.
- 1697, John Dryden, “On the Three Dukes killing the Beadle on Sunday Morning, Febr. the 26th, 1670/1” in John Denham et al., Poems on affairs of state from the time of Oliver Cromwell, to the abdication of K. James the Second, London, p. 148,
- Yet shall Whitehall the Innocent, the Good,
- See these men dance all daub’d with Lace and Blood.
- 1762, Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World, London, for the author, Volume 1, Letter 50, p. 224,
- […] whenever they came in order to pay those islanders a visit, [they] were generally very well dressed, and very poor, daubed with lace, but all the gilding on the outside.
- 1697, John Dryden, “On the Three Dukes killing the Beadle on Sunday Morning, Febr. the 26th, 1670/1” in John Denham et al., Poems on affairs of state from the time of Oliver Cromwell, to the abdication of K. James the Second, London, p. 148,
Derived terms
- dauber (“unskilled painter”)
Translations
to apply something in hasty or crude strokes
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to cover with a specious or deceitful exterior
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See also
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