daub

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”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɔːb/
• (US) IPA^(key): /dɔb/, /dɑb/

• Audio (US):

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• Rhymes: -ɔːb

daub (countable and uncountable, plural daubs)

1. Excrement or clay used as a bonding material in construction.
2. A soft coating of mud, plaster, etc.
3. A crude or amateurish painting.
   • 2008, Joseph Agassi, Ian Charles Jarvie, A Critical Rationalist Aesthetics, page 16:

     Ah, but what if he penned what in the art schools they call an 'artist's statement' wherein he explained the relation of his gibberish or his daubs to the mainstream of art or writing?

• wattle and daub

• (dab): dab, pat, splat

daub (third-person singular simple present daubs, present participle daubing, simple past and past participle daubed)

1. (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, The Holy Bible,  (King James Version), London: Robert Barker, , →OCLC, Exodus 2:3:

     […] she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch […]

   • 1864 August – 1866 January, Gaskell, “The Bride at Home”, in Wives and Daughters. An Every-day Story. , volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., , published 1866, →OCLC, page 180:

     […] 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.

   • 1868–1869, Louisa M Alcott, Little Women: , (please specify |part=1 or 2), Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC:

     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, chapter 15, in For Whom the Bell Tolls‎, London: Jonathan Cape, page 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, chapter 3, in The Price of Salt, Norton, published 2004, page 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 […]

   • 2023 March 8, “Network News: First Tyne & Wear Metro '555' already 'tagged'”, in RAIL, number 978, page 9:

     Unfortunately, one side of the new five-car train is daubed in graffiti, having been vandalised in Wembley Yard, en route from Switzerland.

2. (transitive) To paint (a picture, etc.) in a coarse or unskilful manner.
   • 1695, Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy, translated by John Dryden, Observations on the Art of Painting‎, London: W. Rogers, page 201:

     […] a lame, imperfect Piece, rudely daub’d over with too little Reflection and too much haste.

   • 1725, Isaac Watts, chapter 3, in Logick: Or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth, , 2nd edition, London: John Clark and Richard Hett, , Emanuel Matthews, , and Richard Ford, , published 1726, →OCLC, part II (Of Judgment and Proposition), section 1, page 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, published 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.

3. (transitive, obsolete) To cover with a specious or deceitful exterior; to disguise; to conceal.
   • c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: ”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     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, page 91:

     No flattering praises daub my stone,
     My frailties and my faults to hide;

4. (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,

5. (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, Volume 1, Letter 50, p. 224:

     […] whenever they came in order to pay those islanders a visit, were generally very well dressed, and very poor, daubed with lace, but all the gilding on the outside.

6. (transitive, bingo) To mark spots on a bingo card, using a dauber.

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