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Daub   Listen
verb
Daub  v. t.  (past & past part. daubed; pres. part. daubing)  
1.
To smear with soft, adhesive matter, as pitch, slime, mud, etc.; to plaster; to bedaub; to besmear. "She took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch."
2.
To paint in a coarse or unskillful manner. "If a picture is daubed with many bright and glaring colors, the vulgar admire it is an excellent piece." "A lame, imperfect piece, rudely daubed over."
3.
To cover with a specious or deceitful exterior; to disguise; to conceal. "So smooth he daubed his vice with show of virtue."
4.
To flatter excessively or glossy. (R.) "I can safely say, however, that, without any daubing at all, I am very sincerely your very affectionate, humble servant."
5.
To put on without taste; to deck gaudily. (R.) "Let him be daubed with lace."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Daub" Quotes from Famous Books



... and he seemed a trifle absent as he paused a moment and called her attention to the daub illustrating the Electoral Commission; but this, Betty assumed, was the senatorial manner by day. In a moment he led her to one of the doors in the wall that encloses ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... among your American Indians, with local variations to suit the climate and people. The dancing is done by the men, who get themselves up in the most fantastic manner imaginable with paint of various colors. They daub their faces with pigments in streaks and patches, and trace their ribs with white paint, so that they look more like walking skeletons than like human beings. Generally at one of these dances they wear strips of skin around their waists, and ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... longer throw off the merest daub without being hailed as a young "master." Well, if you only knew how your young masters ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... saloon fixtures a circular bar of cherry wood twelve feet in diameter, which glowed as a small mountain with the customary plain and colored glasses, bottles, labels, and mirrors. The floor was a composition of small, shaded red-and-green marbles; the ceiling a daub of pinky, fleshy nudes floating among diaphanous clouds; the walls were alternate panels of cerise and brown set in rosewood. Mr. Kerrigan, when other duties were not pressing, was usually to be found standing chatting with several ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... flagrant frauds. Sketch after sketch, study after study, was sent in to him as master of ceremonies until, in his own words, he became so "fed up with post-impressionism that he could not stand another daub of the stuff!" The worm turned eventually, and he vowed to teach those "artists" a short, sweet lesson. He knew nothing about painting, being a writer by trade, but he had the run of several studios and could collect paint as he willed. After fortifying ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... that it required extracting must have seemed a sufficient earnest of the ultimate misadventure so craftily plotted by Levy himself. His great nose glowed with the imminence of victory. His strong lips loosened their habitual hold upon each other, and there was an impressionist daub of yellow fang between. The brilliant little eyes were reduced to sparkling pinheads of malevolent glee. This was not the fighting face I knew better and despised less, it was the living epitome of low cunning and ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... Marmaduke, or Hugh, or Moosehead, or any other, invent a new style or mythology, I fancy that the world will be all brave and right, if dressed in these colors, which I had not thought of. Then at once I will daub with this new paint; but it will not stick. 'Tis like the cement which the peddler sells at the door; he makes broken crockery hold with it, but you can never buy of him a bit of the cement which will make it hold ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... they?" said a bronze statuette of Vischer's. "They daub themselves green with verdigris, or sit out in the rain to get rusted; but green and rust are not patina; only the ages ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... instincts, and so used it, just as he had used the dumb-bells in the morning. All things were made for man, weren't they? He was leaning against the door of the school-house,—a red, flaunting house, the daub on the landscape: but, having his back to it, he could not see it, so through his half-shut eyes he suffered the beauty of the scene to act on him. Suffered: in a man, according to his creed, the will being dominant, and all influences, such as ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... 'yellow peach-stocks and one gumtree you get it against the skyline looking up from the spruit. The old pole and daub house dropped to pieces long ago. I do hope that cross is standing all right still. I blame myself for not having seen about it this last ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... copying were more in vogue than it is. But imitation, the endeavor to be Gothic, or Tyrolese, or Venetian, without the slightest grain of Gothic or Venetian feeling; the futile effort to splash a building into age, or daub it into dignity, to zigzag it into sanctity, or slit it into ferocity, when its shell is neither ancient nor dignified, and its spirit neither priestly nor baronial,—this is the degrading vice of the age; fostered, as if man's reason ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... kitchens of the period were usually situated at no great distance from the Hall, and were in general of very slight construction; frequently they were only wooden-framed buildings, with walls of wattle and daub, and thatched roofs, hence the need for the continual repairs that figure so ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... daub before him. A less-trained eye would have seen only the daub, just as a poor judge of horse-flesh might see only awkward joints and long legs in a weanling colt, though it be ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... to the left, and we were soon in a trim wood that ran up almost from the shore. The blind, thick wall of a small building lay in our path, and by its side a little low-roofed hut of daub ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar

... With this evidence!" And the old man turned afresh, with a staring, wondering homage, to the audacious daub on the easel. ...
— The American • Henry James

... after the sovereign's death. The historical "penance" that on the stage seemed so effective was, as we know, really unavailing. Dramatic license is a great thing, and it is pardonable when it is used with discrimination. But made to do duty as a daub, it is unjustifiable. What is the use of going down into history as one thing, if you are to be bobbed up on the stage, after the passage of centuries, as another? To the feminine playwright, the line that separates saints from sinners ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... hanging in the art gallery. She says it's so lifelike it made her cry. And she's awful happy about Peter. Peter's been posing for a picture for Bernard Rollins and while he was in the studio he got to fooling with the paints and brushes, and lo and behold, if he didn't daub up something that looked like his mother's face when she's smiling. They say Rollins jumped he was so surprised and he put the boy through some paces and swore he'd make a better artist out of him than he was himself. So there you are, and now Mrs. Dustin is dreaming ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... asked he, "should you daub all this color on your face, which makes you look like an Indian warrior in his war-paint? Only two colors are necessary to change the whole face—red and black—at the eyebrows, the nostrils, and the corners of the mouth. Look here;" and taking from ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... is a garden where the people go to eat ices, and to look at roses. For the preservation of the flowers, there is placed at the end of one of the walks a sign-post sort of daub, representing a Swiss peasant girl, holding in her hand a scroll, requesting that the roses might not be gathered. Unhappily for the artist, or for the proprietor, or for both, the petticoat of this figure was so short ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... devotion, and partly to scare away the powers of evil: and for this purpose the Grand Duke has suspended by his bed-side one of the most beautiful of Raffaelle's Madonnas. Truly, I admire the good taste of his piety, though it is rather selfish thus to appropriate such a gem, when the merest daub would answer the same purpose. It was only by secret bribery I obtained a peep at this picture, as the room ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... Greece, and labour making a monkey of itself? Nay! I'll shift the puzzle so you can read it. When the yacht was released from auxiliary duties she was without a crew. The old crew, that of peace times, was gone utterly, with the exception of four. You had the yacht keelhauled, gave her another daub of war paint and set about to find a crew. And I had one especially picked for you! Ordinarily, you've a tolerably keen eye. Didn't it strike you odd to land a crew who talked more or less grammatically, who were clean bodily, who ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... mother had put a nice clean valance, freshly starched and ruffled, around the big four-poster bed in the sitting-room, Will would daub it up with smearcase, and just before the preachers arrived, sneak in under ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... word for the Magdalen's head, which is beautiful beyond measure. Indeed, my dear Sir, I am glad, after my confusion is a little abated, that your part of the things is so delightful; for I am very little satisfied with my own purchases. Donato Creti's(844) copy is a wretched, raw daub; the beautiful Virgin of the original he has made horrible. Then for the statue, the face is not so broad as my nail, and has not the turn of the antique. Indeed, La Vall'ee has done the drapery well, but I can't pardon him the head. My table ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... caulking consisted in plastering a wicker coracle with clay. The earliest caulker on record is Noah, who pitched[163] his ark within and without with pitch. In the Vulgate (Genesis, vi. 14), the pitch is called bitumen and the verb is linere, "to daub, besmear, etc." Next in chronological order comes the mother of Moses, who "took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch" (Exodus, ii. 3), bitumine ac pice in the Vulgate. Bitumen, or mineral pitch, was regularly applied to this purpose, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries, And daub their natural faces unaware More and ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... walls, and with that filthy crop Death sprang also from the water-soaked earth. Men died, and women and children, the baron of the castle, the franklin on the farm, the monk in the abbey and the villein in his wattle-and-daub cottage. All breathed the same polluted reek and all died the same death of corruption. Of those who were stricken none recovered, and the illness was ever the same—gross boils, raving, and the black blotches which gave ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... woman looking at herself in a very large mirror created a disagreeable impression. The Japanese press had been requesting the removal of the piece, and uttering comments not flattering to Western art ideas. Nevertheless the canvas was by a Japanese painter. It was a daub; but it had been boldly priced at ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... glow. The sea took on a thousand shades, but they were only infinite variations of blue, and those rosy walls I just spoke of began to flush in the thick sunshine. Every patch of colour, every yard of weather- stained stucco, every glimpse of nestling garden or daub of sky above a calle, began to shine and sparkle—began, as the painters say, to "compose." The lagoon was streaked with odd currents, which played across it like huge smooth finger-marks. The gondolas multiplied and spotted it allover; every gondola and gondolier ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... the life and customs of the Boers coming to investigate these burgher camps? I have seen, and do not hesitate to say, that most of them are better housed, better clothed, and better fed than in their own homes of wattle and daub, and ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... not suffered to put an arm out, or toss off a quilt that almost smothers you, or drink a drop of cold water. Once in a while, I thought, to be just sufficiently sick to sit in the easy chair and look over mother's pretty things, or daub with her color-box, while people brought me oranges and waited upon me, did very well. I was not a gentle, timid, feminine sort of a child, as I have said before—one who would faint at the prick ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... face. The electric bulb in her dressing room was incased in a wire like a baseball mask. A burning prison of light. Fat sticks of grease paint with the grain of Hattie's flesh printed on the daub end. Furiously brown cheesecloth. An open jar of cream (chocolate) with the gesture of the gouge in it. A woolly black wig on a shelf, its kinks seeming to crawl. There was a rim of Hattie au natural left around her ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... your talents are gen'ral, you know, Marrowbones, cherrystones, Bundle'em jig. Set up an artist, take portraits also. The Ass took the hint—daub'd a canvas or so, But found that his genius was lazy and slow. Like an ambling, scambling, Braying-sweet, turn-up feet, Mane-cropt, tail-lopt, High-bred, ...
— Deborah Dent and Her Donkey and Madam Fig's Gala - Two Humorous Tales • Unknown

... you to hang that portrait up in your library? it is a staring likeness, it is true, but it appears to me a wretched daub." ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... wish to be shown as he was. He must have known that there were dark spots on his fame. He might also have felt with pride that the splendour of his fame would bear many spots. He would have wished posterity to have a likeness of him, though an unfavourable likeness, rather than a daub at once insipid and unnatural, resembling neither him nor anybody else. "Paint me as I am," said Oliver Cromwell, while sitting to young Lely. "If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling." Even in such a trifle, the great Protector ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... discarded his air of imbecility, he gave abundant proofs of intelligence. He helped the asylum barber, and showed skill and neatness in the way he soaped the other patients' faces, but if a doctor appeared on the scene, he would daub the soap clumsily in their eyes and mouths. In playing cards he showed no lack of skill and never missed an opportunity ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... forming the "center," stand Karl Rosenkranz[1] in Koenigsberg (1805-79), C.L. Michelet in Berlin (p. 16; Hegel, the Unrefuted World-philosopher, 1870; System of Philosophy, 1876 seq.), and the theologians Marheineke (a pupil of Daub at Heidelberg) and W. Vatke (Philosophy of Religion, edited by Preiss, 1888). Contrasted with these is the group of semi- or pseudo-Hegelians (p. 596), who declare themselves in accord with the theistic doctrines of the right, but admit that the left represents ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... the world but a pose. There was a wretched picture of Charles I. in the dining-room—a daub "after" some famous thing, she supposed—all eyes and hair, long face, and lace collar. Mr. Helbeck was "made up" to that—she was sure of it. He had found out the likeness, and improved upon it. Oh! if one could only present him with the ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... ME. It is Lucy's tragedy. I've seen the magnificent ancient palace of the Wolfburghs. It is a flat! In the very house where I went to-day. The third story flat just under the attics where the poor Joneses daub portraits. I passed the open doors and I saw the shabby old tables and chairs and the princesses—two fat old women in frowzy wrappers, and their hair in papers, eating that soup of pork and cabbages ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis

... and yeomen prickers who were attached to the King's hunt. The King himself was staying at Castle Malwood, but several of his suite had been compelled to seek such quarters as they might find in the wooden or wattle-and-daub cottages of the village. Here and there a small escutcheon, peeping from a glassless window, marked the night's lodging of knight or baron. These coats-of-arms could be read, where a scroll would be meaningless, and the bowman, like ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... commenced operations by cutting out at the same time a portion of the ornamental papering from the wall commensurate with the picture. I looked upon it with a sort of superstitious reverence; and I have always thought that the strong and eager impulse I felt for the possession of this hideous daub proceeded from a far different source than mere fondness for the memorials of childhood. Be that as it may, I am a firm believer in a special Providence; and that, too, as discovered in the most trivial as well as the most ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... beauty of shape which only a masterpiece could have, but the efficacy of bringing home a subject or expressing an emotion which could be just as efficaciously represented or elicited by the vilest daub or the wretchedest barrel organ! This inevitable, and I believe, salutary illusion of the artist, is further in creased by the fact that while the artist's ingenuity must be bent on avoiding irrelevance and ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee

... Go daub your ruines, your face looks fouler than a storm: the Foot-man stayes for you in the ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... (see circular,) this department, to save expense, Mrs. Smith's accomplished daughter has. She teaches crayoning and pencilling—a few learn to daub in water-colors—but this she rather discourages, as colored crayoning is much easier and quite as showy—this is the word for everything here. Miss Smith also teaches French—Anglicized. It is hardly worth while to mention 'the solids,' as these are shoved into a corner to give place to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... some Tuscan town And rent a palace for a song, And all the walls I'll whitewash down Some day when I am feeling strong; And there I'll pass my days among My books, and, when my reading palls And Summer days are overlong, I'll daub up frescoes on ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... said he, and looked round for a place to knock out his pipe. I passed him the ash-bowl that Mac brought back from Mexico when he went down there to do a bird's-eye view for a mining company. Mr. Carville held it up to examine the crude red and blue daub on the ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... some of the folding box-traps which I always carried with me—and what with trying to realise the pecuniary magnificence of our future existence together, I was exceedingly busy when Blythe came in to display, as I supposed, his most recent daub to me. ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... continually throws out boiling pitch accompanied by a filthy smoke, the pitch flowing into a great field which is always full of it. The Moors call this opening the mouth of hell; and on account of the great abundance of the pitch, the people of the country daub all their boats two or three inches thick with it on the outside, so that no water can enter them. These boats are called danec. When there is plenty of water in the Tigris, the boats may go down from Bagdat to Basora in eight or nine days; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... the package of bills in a large, strong blue linen envelope which he had ready to hand, and carefully gummed down the flap. Under the amused eye of Nickleby he proceeded to hold a stick of gray sealing-wax in the flame of a match and to daub this additional precaution upon the flap. The envelope was then placed in the new tan satchel, the catches snapped and the satchel locked by Podmore, who thereupon walked over to the President of the Interprovincial Loan ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... daub will do, provided your hand lays on the colours. But nothing less than that would satisfy me. Come! Isn't that a pretty speech? And you didn't angle for it either!" He caught her hand and rubbed it against his cheek. "You are civilizing me wonderfully," he ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... I have asked my sister to watch her brother's welfare. I will go. Come, be a good fellow. Let us go and sign the articles which make two soldiers of fortune instead of one. I have spoken to Du Puys and Chaumonot. It is all settled but the daub of ink. Together, Paul; you will make history and I shall embalm it." He placed a hand upon the Chevalier's arm, his boyish face beaming with the prospect ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... implements known to and used by the Romans were never used in Britain after their departure; if the old methods of land-surveying under the agrimensores is not to be traced in Britain as a continuing system; if wattle and daub, rude, uncarpentered trees turned root upwards to form roofs, were the leading principles of house-architecture, it cannot be alleged that the Romans left behind any permanent marks of their economical ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... all!... Don't despise me because I tell you frankly what everybody thinks in secret I'm no sillier than the rest. But what use are philosophy, history, and science to me? As for art,—you see,—I strum and daub and make messy little water-color sketches;—but is that enough to fill a woman's life? There is only one end to our life: marriage. But do you think there is much fun in marrying this or that young man whom I know as well as you do? I see them as they are. I am not fortunate enough to ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... "Paint? 'Daub,' you mean. Guess Charlie tried to knock painting into my—my thick head. But he had to quit it after I reached the daubing stage. I don't think he guesses I'll ever win prizes at it," she went on, moving up toward the pine. "Still, I might ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... Because his father wishes it—and the old Nabob yonder, who seems a kindly-disposed, easy-going, old heathen philosopher. Here's a pretty little girl: money I suppose in sufficiency—everything satisfactory, except, I grant you, the campaigner. The lad might daub his canvases, christen a child a year, and be as happy as any young donkey that browses on this common of ours—but he must go and heehaw after a zebra forsooth! a lusus naturae is she! I never spoke to a woman ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... I'll none hurt ye," said Gubblum. Jabez pulled the door after him. "His head's no'but a lump of puddin' and a daub ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... them had much hope of escaping the fury of the mob. The Duke of Bayswater and Colonel Featherstone rode a little in advance. The poor old duke's hat had fallen off, and his bald head was a shining mark for missiles. An egg had struck his pate and made an offensive daub. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... more frequent in these warm Climates, than Countries more distant from the Sun. These pretty Fabricks are commonly supported with eight Feet or Posts, about seven Foot high from the Ground, well daub'd within and without upon Laths, with Loom or Clay, which makes them tight, and fit to keep out the smallest Insect, there being a small Door at the gable End, which is made of the same Composition, and to be remov'd at Pleasure, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... friends, without raising a laugh at the expense of his taste in figures. The whole crew, however, soon fell as much in love with the damsel as the boatswain had done before them; and it would have been cruel to have sent the painter to daub her ladyship all over with one uniform colour, according to the general fashion. The considerate commander ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... hovel. pentracxi to daub. hundacxo a cur. popolacxo rabble, mob. obstinacxa obstinate. ridacxi ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman

... period Henry had been a mighty entomologist; and, as the late summer came on, he and all available sisters would set out, armed with butterfly-nets and other paraphernalia, just before twilight, to the nearest woodland, where they would proceed to daub the trees with an intoxicating preparation of honey and rum,—a temptation to which moths were declared in text-books to be incapable of resistance. Then, as night fell, Henry would light his bull's-eye, and cautiously visit the various snares. It ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... misrepresentation, distortion, caricatura|, exaggeration; daubing &c. v.; bad likeness, daub, sign painting; scratch, caricature; anamorphosis[obs3]; burlesque, falsification, misstatement; parody, lampoon, take-off, travesty. V. misrepresent, distort, overdraw, exaggerate, caricature, daub; burlesque, parody, travesty. Adj. misrepresented ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... to write to "his friend the cardinal." The husbands, glad to entertain an artist so cheaply, consulted him about the plan for a new chapel or the designs for an altar, and on their saint's day they would receive with a condescending mien some present from Cotoner—a "little daub," a landscape painted on a piece of wood, that often needed an explanation before they could understand what it ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... for "wattle and daub" I could wish that it had never been invented. The more it saves in time and gains in space, the greater and the more general is the disaster that it may cause; for it is made to catch fire, like torches. It seems better, therefore, to spend on walls of burnt brick, and be at expense, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... had in the meantime placed a huge tub on the deck, and a couple of small casks. On these we were compelled to sit down, when he immediately with a paint-brush began to daub our faces over with the contents of a bucket of grease. He then drew out his razor, and scraped us in the most cruel fashion, taking off the ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston

... warning! and equally, of unprincipled physicians who daub around in the larynx, burn it, cut it, and make everything worse ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann

... shows herself in heaps of filthy hovels, wattle and daub and dingy thatch; in "umbrella-trees" (ficus), acacias and calabashes, palms and cotton-trees, all wilted, stunted, and dusty as at Cairo. We are in the latitude of East African Kilwa and of Brazilian Pernambuco; but this is a lee-land, and the suffering is from drought. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... But soon as cropp'd, grows dull and dead. Thou art the sand, which fills one glass, And then doth to another pass; And could I put thee to a stay, Thou art but dust! Then go thy way, And leave me clean and bright, though poor; Who stops thee doth but daub his floor; And, swallow-like, when he hath done, To unknown dwellings must be gone! Welcome, pure thoughts, and peaceful hours, Enrich'd with sunshine and with show'rs; Welcome fair hopes, and holy cares, The not to be repented shares ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... walls are whitewashed. The bedroom is plainly and rudely furnished. Some cottages do not even attain to this degree of comfort. They consist of four posts set in the ground which support the cross-beam and the roof, and the walls are made of wattle and daub, i.e., of small split willow sticks, put upright and daubed over with coarse plaster. The roofs of these cottages are often half hidden with rank grass, moss, and sillgreen, a vegetation perhaps ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... and nimble little fingers captured it at once. Then Uncle Andy plastered the spot with a daub of wet, black earth, and peered over it solemnly at the Babe's swollen ear. He straightened his grizzled hair, and tried to look as if nothing out of the ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... an acceptable thing, not displeasing; it must be "as the voice of harpers harping with their harps," but not "as the voice of many waters," or "as the voice of great thunders." Thus would many heal the wound of the daughter of Zion slightly, and daub the wall with untempered mortar, and so far comply with the sinful humours and inclinations of men, as, in effect, to harden them in evil, and to strengthen their hands in their wickedness; or at least, if men be moralised, then to trouble them no farther. Saith not the Apostle, "If I yet ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... distributed,—but dirt is picturesque, even if objectionable. Character is expressed in dirt; the bright and shining school-boy face is devoid of interest, an artificial product, quite unnatural; the smutty street urchin is an actor on life's stage, every daub, spot, and line an essential ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... of the street to our house, which they as often extinguished, for which they were very much commended by the king and other principal people. Old Foyne came to our door on horseback, and advised us to put all our things into the godown, and daub up the door with wet clay, which would place them in safety. Captain Brower likewise, and some of his people, came very kindly to our house, offering to assist us either by land or water, if needful. It could ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... said Frenhofer, "it is only a daub which I made to study a pose; it is worth nothing. Those are my errors," he added, waving his hand towards the enchanting compositions on the ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac

... he said musingly, "but until now I never realized how stiff and unreal the daub is. Shall ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... all that, in recent days had tortured her like an unexplained blot, an alien daub in the face which every one sees but he whom it disfigures. Now she knew what the smiling hints of her friends and the consoling desires of men had meant. Now she recognised the reason why she was wounded ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... who had been indebted to my great-grandparents for kindness, had shown his gratitude by painting a picture of the execution of that Duc de Vandaleur who perished in the Revolution, my great-grandfather having been the model. It was a wretched daub, but the subject was none the less horrible for that, and the caricatured likeness to my great-grandfather did not make it seem less real or ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... and thence by water to Halfway House, and there eat some supper we carried with us, and so walked home again, it being late we were forced to land at the dock, my wife and they, but I in a humour not willing to daub my shoes went round by the Custom House. So home, and by and by to bed, Creed lying with me in the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... with his lower left arm in a sling and a daub of antiseptic plaster over the back of his head came up and gave him a radioprint slip. Guido Karamessinis, the Resident-Agent at Grank, had reported, at last. The city, he said, was quiet, but King Yoorkerk's troops had ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... to accurate discrimination; but, as he becomes more accomplished in a fine art, and more appreciative of it, he recognizes every defect or blemish of his previous work, until the musical performance seems a wretched failure and the painting a mere daub. The change, however, is wholly in the workman and not in the work: both the music and the painting are in themselves just what they were, but the man is capable of something so much better, that his standard of comparison is raised to a higher level, and ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... family. Lot's wife stands in the distance, a graceful figure just crystallized, her head turned in the direction of the doomed city. I looked into every dark corner, in hopes of finding some old daub representing Doa Marina, but without success. There is the strangest contrast possible between these half-abandoned palaces, and their actual proprietors. We had beautiful riding-horses belonging to the hacienda, and enjoyed everything but the exceeding heat of the sun, as ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... order, sir,' said Chalks, 'must approve his mettle by undergoing something in the nature of an initiatory ordeal. We may now drop foolery, and converse like intelligent human beings. You were asking our opinion of Willy's daub——' ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... N. misrepresentation, distortion, caricatura^, exaggeration; daubing &c v.; bad likeness, daub, sign painting; scratch, caricature; anamorphosis^; burlesque, falsification, misstatement; parody, lampoon, take-off, travesty. V. misrepresent, distort, overdraw, exaggerate, caricature, daub; burlesque, parody, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... schoolroom alone, his mother being too busy to go with him. He had waded across the street where the mud and slush were worse than anywhere else. His boots were smeared to their very tops, and the new book that he started with had a black daub the size of your hand on the bright cover. He came late and, without a word of hesitation, marched to the desk, and remarked to the woman in charge: "Mam said you was to ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... were stained and smeared with grease; they were amply large. Chet did not bother to strip off his own blouse; he pulled on the other clothes over his own, and his face was alight with a grin of appreciation of Spud's attention to details as he took a daub of the grease, rubbed it on his hands, then passed ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin

... I only mean to give you a word or two on the subject. This little jar has got tar in it, and tar's a very wholesome and useful thing in its proper place. Now, a few months ago them as shall be nameless meant to daub William all over with this, and feather him afterwards, because he wouldn't break his pledge. A cowardly lot they was to deal so with one man against a dozen of 'em; but that's neither here nor there. I only want you, boys and girls, to take ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... Awakening between six and seven next morning, I heard Scott's voice close to me, and looking out of the little latticed window of the then detached cottage called the chapel, saw him and Tom Purdie pacing together on the green before the door, in earnest deliberation over what seemed to be a rude daub of a drawing; and every time they approached my end of their parade, I was sure to {p.281} catch the words Blue Bank. It turned out in the course of the day, that a field of clay near Toftfield went by this name, and that the draining of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... then her trouble began in earnest. This night it was next to impossible to compose her thoughts, as young John Keene's affairs had been thrust before her with startling vividness. The midnight hour passed, and still she sat by her little table, with pen lying flat on the paper and a great daub spreading outward from its point. Her head dropped upon her arm, and she was dreaming of Corney. The disturbance of the party breaking up in the adjoining room made her eyes open, and she listened intently, for she had a premonition that she had not seen the last of them. ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer

... corner of the Italian interpreter's apartment a daub of a print of the King and Queen of France taking leave of their family, with a German inscription; and thinking the Abbe Edgeworth had a good right to be in it, and as a kind of German notion of an Abbe appeared in the print, and something like Edgewatz in the German words, I put ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... the presence on his territory of a plucky band of missionary pioneers. He did not care about Christianity but he liked the trade goods the missionaries brought to purchase food and pay for labour in the erection of a station. These trade goods they kept in a storehouse made of wattle and daub. But this temporary building was not proof against cunning attempts at burglary on the part of the natives. The missionaries at length went to the Chief (who was clothed shamelessly in the stolen calicoes) and sought redress. "All right," said ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... profession. True, in pastoral society, the lawless man was eager to lift cattle, to break down the barrier between robbery and warfare. But the contrast is as sharp between the savagery of the ancient reiver and the polished performance of Captain Hind as between the daub of the pavement and the perfection ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... talking about my father. That's how he came to send me to Paris to study Art. And since then I've done some thinking. It works out like this," he pursued, stepping back and studying his daub between half-closed eyes, "the old man had struck ore as usual. I never knew a mind fuller of common sense—just homely common sense—but he hadn't the time to work it. Yet it works easy enough if you keep hold of the argument. The Old Masters—we're ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... transported from one place to another. Huge triangular piles of planks are also reared in different parts of the devoted messuage; and a little group of trees, that still grace the eastern end, which rises in a gentle ascent, have just received warning to quit, expressed by a daub of white paint, and are to give place to a curious ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... into a Hiue, Amongst the Bees he letteth driue And downe their Coombes begins to riue, All likely to haue spoyled: Which with their Waxe his face besmeard, And with their Honey daub'd his Beard It would haue made a man afeard, To see how he was ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... and so delicious is the merest whiff of it, that it forms not only an irresistible but a long-range allurement for many kinds of fur-bearers. Indeed, so pungent was it, that Oo-koo-hoo carried merely a little of it in a cap-box, and found that a tiny daub was quite sufficient to do his work. The reason for using the two kinds of bait was that while the mixed bait would attract the animal to the trap by its scent, the sight of the duck's head would induce the fox to enter the hole, step upon the unseen trap while reaching ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... the clock, and looking-glass Reflecting me again; She vow'd her Love was very fair— I see I'm very plain. And there's that daub of Prince Leboo, 'Twas Pamela's fond banter To fancy it ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker

... councils; she is a Queen of colleges, and may wield her sceptre with a strong hand and a proud. But are there not some among her subjects who are deaf to the sounds of calm advice?—some who are so blind as to love her faults and prop up her abuses?—some who daub her walls with the untempered mortar of their blind prejudice, and treat every one as an enemy who would aid in removing here and there a bent pillar, and here and there a crumbling stone? (These words were written ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... Free Trade! During secession time in Charleston, there was displayed in front of the closed theatre, a foolish daub on canvas, depicting crowded wharves, cotton bales, arriving and departing vessels, and other indications of maritime and commercial prosperity, surmounted by seven stars, that being the expected number of seceding States, all presented as a representation of the good time ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... snails crawling up walls or fruit trees daub the ground with a thick paste of soot and train oil. There is no remedy so effectual for ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... had been rigged up as a rustic playhouse, the stage covering one end, elevated about three feet from the threshing floor. Curtains with daub pictures were strung across the stage, separated in the center and shifted backward and forward, as the varying scenes of the family play were presented for the hisses or cheers ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... compel them to furnish sport for you? Have I not seen them come in, talking boldly and loud, and yet seat themselves submissively at a sign from you? And do you not swathe them in the garb of humiliation, and daub their countenances with whiteness, and threaten their bared throats with the gleaming knife, and grind their heads under the resistless wheel? Then, having in disdain granted them their worthless lives, you set them free; and they ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... young lord would give no heed to her Grace, and spat out at the picture, and cried to take away the daub—into the fire with it—anywhere out of his sight. Unless his dear, his beautiful Sidonia came to tend him, he would die—he ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... first glance, it is not always easy to distinguish between these huts of wattle and daub and those built with crude bricks. The ordinary Egyptian brick is a mere oblong block of mud mixed with chopped straw and a little sand, and dried in the sun. At a spot where they are about to build, one man is told off to break ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... wearied you. You sighed for somewhat simple, quiet, restful. The pictures were pronounced poor. I don't know whether they were or not. I never can tell a picture as a cook tells her mince-pie meat, by tasting it. One picture is a revealer and one is a daub; but they are alike to me at first glance. For a picture has an individuality all its own. You must woo it with tender ardor, or it will not yield up its heart. The chance look sees only color and contour; but as you gaze the color glows, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... they are coy and quaint. But they grosly daub and paint; The Spanish kind, and apt to please, But fav'ring of the same disease: Of Dutch and French some few are comely, The French are light, the Dutch are homely. Let Tagus, Po, the Loire and Rhine Then veil unto ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... all feeble spirits naturally live in the past, because it has no boundaries; it is a soft job; you can find in it what you like. The past ages are rank, and I can daub myself freely with whatever colours I extract. It requires no courage to face the past, because the past is full of facts which neutralize one another; of men certainly no wiser than we, and of things done which we could not want to do. I know I cannot ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... your copies will remain in Paris. If copying wearies you, console yourself with thinking that you are doing it for THE REMISSION OF YOUR SINS. I should not like to give my little spider-feet to any copyist who would daub coarsely. Once more I make this request, for had I again to write these eighteen pages, I should most certainly go ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... two ways, we take it, of looking at a picture—from a purely chemical, and from a purely artistic, point of view. Regarded in the first light, it matters little whether a painting be a work of genius or a daub, provided the pigments employed on it are good and properly compounded. The effects produced are lost sight of in a consideration of the materials, their permanence, fugacity, and conduct towards each other. Painting is essentially a chemical operation: with his pigments ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... minds wander through the museum, very interesting, "Just look at this mosaic, John." Exhibit of modern art in the gallery. "Portrait of a girl," only a daub to the wayfaring man. Lovers in secluded places stealing a kiss, caught by the middle-aged. ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

... he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... back in the usurers' purses, or that there could be anything better to preserve one from the cannibals than to take a rope of onions, knit with three hundred turnips, and a little of a calf's chaldern of the best allay that the alchemists have provided, (and) that they daub and do over with clay, as also calcinate and burn to dust these pantoufles, muff in muff out, mouflin mouflard, with the fine sauce of the juice of the rabble rout, whilst they hide themselves in some petty mouldwarphole, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... hands of innocence — go, scare your sheep together, The blundering, tripping tups that bleat behind the old bell-wether; And if they snuff the taint and break to find another pen, Tell them it's tar that glistens so, and daub them ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... failing as regards the bottle was too well known; and it was also known that, in acquiring his title, he had not quite laid aside the rough mode of speech which he had used in his early years. There was, consequently, a great daub painted up on sundry walls, on which a navvy, with a pimply, bloated face, was to be seen standing on a railway bank, leaning on a spade holding a bottle in one hand, while he invited a comrade to drink. "Come, Jack, shall us ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Daub" :   slur, smirch, plaster, wattle and daub, blot, blemish, render-set, apply, masonry, daubing, blood, splotch, mar, picture, clay, painting, smear, coat, put on, parget, cover, roughcast, fingermark, mortar, dauber, smudge, inkblot, surface, defect



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