ppl. a. Also 9 Sc. whumplet. [f. WIMPLE v. or sb. + -ED.]
1. Enveloped in or wearing a wimple; hence, veiled, occas. blindfolded.
1579. E. Hake, Newes out of Powles (1872), G ij. Which all doth spring from wimpled B: and old deceitfull Bawde.
1588. Shaks., L. L. L., III. i. 181. This wimpled, whyning, purblinde waiward Boy.
1839. Longf., Hyperion, III. iii. Neither wimpled nun nor cowled monk.
1874. L. Morris, Gilbert Beckett, xix. The wimpled maid, demurely shy.
2. Arranged or falling in folds like a wimple; hence, wrinkled; rippled.
1599. T. Storer, Life & Death Wolsey, E 1. A wimpled scarfe bedew’d with hearers teares.
1812. Cary, Dante, Purg., VIII. 74. Since she has changed the white and wimpled folds.
1909. ‘Q’ (Quilier-Couch), True Tilda, xv. 198. She too conned it [the stream], but could read nothing of his faith in the wimpled surface.
2. fig. Involved, intricate. Sc.
a. 1722. Fountainhall, in M. P. Brown, Suppl. Dict. Decis. (1826), III. 329. This was thought an odd and wimpled interlocutor.
1725. Ramsay, Gentle Sheph., III. ii. The wimpled Meaning of your unco Tale.
1768. Ross, Helenore, Introd. Sick wimpl’d wark would crack a pow like thine.
1823. Galt, R. Gilhaize, lxvii. There was no difficulty in reading the whumplet meaning of this couthiness anent the reeking o’ the chamber.
