Sir W. Rose has works that bear painful evidence of failing health; indeed, his group of the Duc et Duchesse d'Aumale (705), with the Prince de Condé and the Duc de Guise, is quite unfinished and even blotted. The face of the Duke is refined, but weak; the colour is pale, and the background only a dabble of unarranged and undrilled touches.

And then methought my dream changed, and two Great Giants with heading-axes came striding over the bed, […] And I woke up with my hair all in a dabble with the night-dews, with my Grandmother's voice ringing in my ears, "Remember the Thirtieth of January!"

The lighting in the corridor just dabbles of arcs, afterthoughts, smears. The light a grime that gives him a slight headache. The same type as when it has rained, remained humid, a fetid stale of ozone over everything.

Happily, however, he [the gnat] is born a swimmer and can take his pleasure in his native element, poising himself near its surface head downwards, tail upwards. Why chooses he this strange position? Just for the same reason that we rather prefer, when taking a dabble in the waves, to have our heads above water, for the convenience, namely, of receiving a due supply of air, which the little swimmer in question sucks in through a sort of tube in his tail.

After a dabble in a teaspoonful of water, and a scrape with a bit of an old sack, in a box, which is dignified with the title of "wash room"—for the American cars are, as it were, moveable hotels, with every accommodation complete (including what, I think, from a sanitary point of view, had very much better not be there), I took a walk up and down the train, with the rest of my fellow-passengers, and thereby improved my appetite for the breakfast which we were to take at a station down the road.

[…] I was induced to quit Leeds ſooner than uſual, as the concourſe of company which would aſſemble on that occaſion was expected to be very numerous and productive, and of courſe I could not idly let ſlip ſuch a lucrative proſpect but muſt have a dabble for the loaves and fiſhes.

From the separate little tracts and fragments which we have last noticed, (as well as the greater works, which contain a fuller development of his views on this subject,) it appears he slighted what has been termed Natural Theology. He was content with the Bible, without which Natural Theology is a dabble of inconclusive presumptions, and in connexion with which, however pleasing as a speculative inquiry, useless as a canon of faith, or a rule of life.

A dabble in the stocks does not always turn out profitably; cotton is sometimes heavy on our hands, and real estate will sulkily retrograde, when, by the calculation, it ought to have advanced.

If ſhe [the nurse] obſerves that the ſkin ſeems any where to be chafed, after dabbling the part very well with cold water, and drying it gently with a fine cloth, let her apply ſome common powder to it, by means of a ſoft puff.

The children sat on the dock and dabbled their feet in the water.

She’s an actress by trade, but has been known to dabble in poetry.

And now that I have finiſhed all the parts, which I propoſed to diſcourſe of; I will conclude all with a ſhort application to the Atheiſts. And I would adviſe them as a Friend, to leave off this dabbling and ſmattering in Philoſophy, this ſhuffling and cutting with Atoms.

The politics too, for it [the opera] dabbles in politics, are evidently not written from the heart, for the ſentiments contradict each other, but from the paultry motive of catching applauſe, be it juſt or unjuſt, moral or immoral.

His Alfred Hitchcock's] work is a mirror of cinematic development: from silent to sound, from black and white to color, from the shoestring productions of his early London years to the expensive vehicles of his Hollywood period. In the process, he dabbled in technical innovations such as 3-D and VistaVision, experimened in special effects and editing techniques, and developed an extensive repertoire of original camera setups and shots.

[A fellow of a college in Cambridge] freely confeſs'd, that he had for many Years been ranſacking Antiquity, in order to be the Author of ſome new Heresy or Opinion; and that after all his Searches, he cou'd think or fix upon nothing, but what on Fool or another had been meddling and dabbling with.

Dabble

Meaning

Verb

Noun

Origin

Related

Rhymes