v. [f. BE- 1 + DAUB v.]
1. trans. To daub over with anything that sticks, to plaster.
1558. Phaër, Æneid, II. (R.). But now in dust his beard bedawb’d [is].
1683. Lorrain, Muret’s Rites Fun., 5. They all bedawbed their faces with mire and dirt.
1763. J. Brown, Poetry & Mus., § 6. 119. THESPIS and his Company bedaubed their Faces with the Lees of Wine.
1860. Gosse, Rom. Nat. Hist., 24. And with a painter’s brush [he] had bedaubed the trunks of several large trees.
b. fig. To bespatter with abuse, to vilify.
1553–87. Foxe, A. & M. (1596), 532/1. Your dirtie pen … hath not so bedaubed and bespotted me … but I hope to spunge it out.
1662. Pepys, Diary, 30 Oct. He prepares to bedaube him.
1705. Otway, Orphan, Prol. 18. The names of Honest Men bedawb’d.
2. To ornament clumsily or vulgarly; to bedizen.
1581. J. Bell, Haddon’s Answ. Osor., 309. They bedawbe their Temples on every side, with pictures, and Poppettes.
1716. Lady M. W. Montagu, Lett., xxii. I. 67. The emperor and empress have two of these little monsters … all bedaubed with diamonds.
1862. Thackeray, Four Georges, i. (1862), 63. Are now embroidered and bedaubed.
b. fig. To load with rhetorical devices, with praise, etc.; to belaud to excess.
1581. J. Bell, Haddon’s Answ. Osor., 493. Untymely applications, wherewith his discourse is altogether bedawbedd.
1672. Marvell, Reh. Transp., I. 23. Set off, and bedawb’d with Rhetorick.
1790. Boswell, Johnson, III. 57, note. That I … should have … bedawbed him, as the worthy gentleman has bedawbed Scotland?
Bedaubed, -ing ppl. a., Bedaubing vbl. sb.
1624. Quarles, Sion’s Sonn. (1717), 416. A newer fashion … Than eye bedawbing tears, and printed lamentation.
1788. Burns, Lett., 40. Those bedaubing paragraphs with which he is eternally larding the lean characters of certain great men.
1863. Miss Whately, Ragged L. Egypt, xii. 105. Disgust at the bedaubed face of the little one.
