''daub'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''daub'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260207202820-00-⌔

daub - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

daub (countable and uncountable, plural daubs)

• Excrement or clay used as a bonding material in construction.
• A soft coating of mud, plaster, etc.
• A crude or amateurish painting.
  • ✤ 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?¹

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.
  • ✤ […] she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch […]²
  • ✤ […] 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.³
  • ✤ 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.⁴
  • ✤ […] 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 […]⁵
  • ✤ 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.⁶
  • ✤ They were expecting to see me, she said, daubing paint on the canvas and stepping back to gauge the effect.⁷
  • ✤ Cylindrical lanterns daubed in red writing hung at intervals across wooden beams […]⁸
  • ✤ Unfortunately, one side of the new five-car train is daubed in graffiti, having been vandalised in Wembley Yard, en route from Switzerland.⁹
• (transitive) To paint (a picture, etc.) in a coarse or unskilful manner.
  • ✤ […] a lame, imperfect Piece, rudely daub’d over with too little Reflection and too much haste.¹⁰
  • ✤ If a Picture is daub’d with many bright and glaring Colours, the vulgar Eye admires it as an excellent Piece […]¹¹
  • ✤ If some gay picture, vilely daubed, were seen¹²
  • ✤ […] 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.¹³
• ✤ With grass of azure, and a sky of green,
• ✤ Th’impatient laughter we’d suppress in vain,
• ✤ And deem the painter jesting, or insane.
• (transitive, obsolete) To cover with a specious or deceitful exterior; to disguise; to conceal.
  • ✤ So smooth he daub’d his vice with show of virtue,¹⁴
  • ✤ No flattering praises daub my stone,
    My frailties and my faults to hide;¹⁵
• (transitive, obsolete) To flatter excessively or grossly.
  • ✤ I can safely say, however, that without any daubing at all, I am, very sincerely, Your very affectionate, humble servant,¹⁶
• (transitive, obsolete) To put on without taste; to deck gaudily.
  • ✤ Yet shall Whitehall the Innocent, the Good,¹⁷
  • ✤ […] 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.¹⁸
• ✤ See these men dance all daub’d with Lace and Blood.
• (transitive, bingo) To mark spots on a bingo card, using a dauber.

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”), which would make it a doublet of dealbate.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA: /dɔːb/
• (US) IPA: /dɔb/, (cot–caught merger)/dɑb/
• Audio (US): 🔊
• Rhymes: -ɔːb

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 2008, Joseph Agassi, Ian Charles Jarvie, A Critical Rationalist Aesthetics, page 16: ↩

2. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Exodus 2:3: ↩

3. 1864 August – 1866 January, [Elizabeth] 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: ↩

4. 1868–1869, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, Little Women: […],, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC: ↩

5. 1940, Ernest Hemingway, chapter 15, in For Whom the Bell Tolls ‎${}^{[1]}$, London: Jonathan Cape, page 185: ↩

6. 1952, Patricia Highsmith, chapter 3, in The Price of Salt, Norton, published 2004, page 39: ↩

7. 1969, Chaim Potok, The Promise ‎${}^{[2]}$, New York: Fawcett Crest, Book 3, Chapter 16, p. 379: ↩

8. 2007, Tan Twan Eng, The Gift of Rain ‎${}^{[3]}$, New York: Weinstein Books, Book 1, Chapter 21, p. 226: ↩

9. 2023 March 8, “Network News: First Tyne & Wear Metro ‘555’ already ‘tagged’”, in RAIL, number 978, page 9: ↩

10. 1695, Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy, translated by John Dryden, Observations on the Art of Painting ‎${}^{[4]}$, London: W. Rogers, page 201: ↩

11. 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: ↩

12. 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,${}^{[5]}$ ↩

13. 1964, Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man, Vintage, published 2010: ↩

14. 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[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene v]: ↩

15. 1820, John Clare, “The Universal Epitaph”, in Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery ‎${}^{[6]}$, London: Taylor & Hessey, page 91: ↩

16. 1766, Tobias Smollett, Travels through France and Italy ‎${}^{[7]}$, London: R. Baldwin, Volume 2, Letter 28, p. 73: ↩

17. 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,${}^{[8]}$ ↩

18. 1762, Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World ‎${}^{[9]}$, London, Volume 1, Letter 50, p. 224: ↩

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