stipple
English
[edit]
Etymology
[edit]Probably from Dutch stippel (“small dot”), originally applied to the dots themselves and later to the technique.
Noun
[edit]stipple (countable and uncountable, plural stipples)
- (painting) The use of small dots that give the appearance of shading; the dots thus used.
- 1877, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Pied Beauty”, in Robert Bridges, editor, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published […], London: Humphrey Milford, published 1918, →OCLC, page 30, lines 1–3:
- Glory be to God for dappled things— / For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; / For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim: […]
Translations
[edit]the use of small dots that give the appearance of shading
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Verb
[edit]stipple (third-person singular simple present stipples, present participle stippling, simple past and past participle stippled)
- (transitive) To use small dots to give the appearance of shading to.
- c. 1760, Oliver Goldsmith, The citizen of the world: or, letters from a Chinese philosopher, residing in London, to his friends in the east[1], Letter 48:
- Don’t you think, Major Vampyre, that eye-brow stippled very prettily?
- 1851, John Ruskin, Pre-Raphaelitism[2], New York: John Wiley, page 50:
- The worst drawings that have ever come from [ Turner’s] hands are some of this second period, on which he has spent much time and laborious thought; drawings filled with incident from one side to the other, with skies stippled into morbid blue, and warm lights set against them in violent contrast […]
- 1922, T. E. Lawrence, chapter 41, in Seven Pillars of Wisdom[3]:
- There were no footmarks on the ground, for each wind swept like a great brush over the sand surface, stippling the traces of the last travellers till the surface was again a pattern of innumerable tiny virgin waves.
- 1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 10, in Babbitt[4]:
- Outside the car window was a glaze of darkness stippled with the gold of infrequent mysterious lights.
- 1966 October 14, “Charisma, Calluses and Cash”, in Time:
- The biennial profusion of campaign billboards and posters stipples the land that Lady Bird wants to beautify and Lyndon yearns to own.
- 1988, Edmund White, chapter 5, in The Beautiful Room is Empty, New York: Vintage International, published 1994:
- Although he was clean-shaven, black Benday dots traced the narrow pathway of his thin mustache and the stippled edge of his jaw.
Translations
[edit]to use small dots to give the appearance of shading to
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References
[edit]- James A. H. Murray et al., editors (1884–1928), “Stipple”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), volume IX, Part 1 (Si–St), London: Clarendon Press, →OCLC, page 975, column 1.