daub

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)Excrement or clay used as a bonding material in construction.
2. (countable, uncountable)A soft coating of mud, plaster, etc.
3. (countable, uncountable)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?”

verb

1. (intransitive, transitive)To apply (something) to a surface in hasty or crude strokes.

   “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 […]”

   “[…] 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.”

   “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.”

   “[…] 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 […]”

2. (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.”

   “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.”

   “[…] 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. (obsolete, transitive)To cover with a specious or deceitful exterior; to disguise; to conceal.

   “So smooth he daub’d his vice with show of virtue,”

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

4. (obsolete, transitive)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,”

5. (obsolete, transitive)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.”

   “[…] 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.”

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

name

1. A surname.