Find the word definition

Crossword clues for dabble

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
dabble
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
politics
▪ Eckford had become a wealthy man and, having bought a mansion and estate on Manhattan Island, he dabbled in politics.
▪ Business is his profession, dabbling in politics is his passion.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ He dabbled in everything from bicycle exports to large-scale commodities purchases.
▪ Her young quickly join this creche and start dabbling for small crustaceans and tiny molluscs.
▪ I sort of dabble my foot in it like it's a puddle.
▪ In defiant frustration, Nicole dabbles in the underground Seattle rock scene, where the older guys are equally alluring and dangerous.
▪ She spent her girlhood in San Francisco, where her father dabbled in both journalism and the theater.
▪ The four witches dabble in the supernatural to get back at their enemies and fix a few personal-appearance problems.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dabble

Dabble \Dab"ble\ (d[a^]b"b'l), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Dabbled (d[a^]b"b'ld); p. pr. & vb. n. Dabbling (d[a^]b"bl[i^]ng).] To wet by little dips or strokes; to spatter; to sprinkle; to moisten; to wet. ``Bright hair dabbled in blood.''
--Shak.

Dabble

Dabble \Dab"ble\, v. i.

  1. To play in water, as with the hands; to paddle or splash in mud or water.

    Where the duck dabbles 'mid the rustling sedge.
    --Wordsworth.

  2. To work in slight or superficial manner; to do in a small way; to tamper; to meddle. ``Dabbling here and there with the text.''
    --Atterbury.

    During the first year at Dumfries, Burns for the first time began to dabble in politics.
    --J. C. Shairp.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
dabble

1550s, probably a frequentative of dab. Original meaning was "wet by splashing;" modern figurative sense of "do superficially" first recorded 1620s. Related: Dabbled; dabbling. An Ellen Dablewife is in the Lancashire Inquests from 1336.

Wiktionary
dabble

vb. 1 (context transitive English) To partially wet (something) by splashing or dipping; connotes playfulness. 2 (context intransitive English) To participate or have an interest in an activity, but in a casual or superficial way.

WordNet
dabble
  1. v. dip a foot or hand briefly into a liquid

  2. play in or as if in water, as of small children [syn: paddle, splash around]

  3. work with in a non-serious manner; "She dabbles in astronomy"; "He plays around with investments bu he never makes any money" [syn: smatter, play around]

Wikipedia
Dabble

Dabble is an anagram word game designed by George Weiss and published by INI, LLC.

Usage examples of "dabble".

More than cushy: Ferraris and chauffeurs, cribs in Holmby, dabbles in the film biz, private dinners with politicos and power brokers.

For even among his own kind there were murmurs against him and suspicions that he dabbled in forbidden things and our tale might have brought a judgment on him.

From the beginning Darryl Grayson had dabbled in art: he was a prodigy who could paint, by the age of eight, realistic, anatomically correct portraits of his friends.

Once your mother passed away, God bless her, there was no one to mind if I dabbled in trade.

If you stare at one spot long enough, the random texture gets interpreted into some coherent image, or the suggestion of one, like an inkblot or those decalcomania and frottage pieces Max Ernst dabbled with.

She had also worked in Detroit, where a mobster called Scotty Gow operated, sometimes dabbling in kidnapping for profit.

Lieutenant Henbit might not be pleased to hear they were dabbling in his water.

The question is, what was a money launderer doing dabbling with fake art?

The seraskier did not rise for Yashim, but merely motioned him with dabbling fingers to a corner of the divan.

After a while, Sunny went down to dabble in the water, and I stretched out on the silken carpet with my legs in the sun and my topee over my face, half listening to the conversations around me.

Then he bent, wheezing with effort, to dabble a fingertip in the jade liquid.

Nan Belman was a handsome woman, though Fain seldom noticed whether a woman was or not now, a Darkfriend who had thought her oaths were just dabbling in wickedness until Padan Fain appeared on her doorstep.

He had bought the little rough shelties of the North and the Isles, and sold them at lowland fairs, he had dabbled in black cattle, he had done big trade in sheep-skins when a snowstorm decimated the Sutherland flocks, and he had engaged, perhaps, in less reputable ventures, which might be forbidden by the law of the land, but were not contrary, so he believed, to the Bible.

This dabbling with the intricate trivia of human society irked him, and the demon bubbling below the surface was never far away, rising to taunt him.

Lord Baldrick Abbott dabbled in science, something Hetty would find dreadfully boring, and he tended to look down his over-large nose at women.