Dictionary

beplaster en · VERB

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₁ep-der. Proto-Indo-European *h₁épsder. Proto-Indo-European *h₁épider. Proto-Indo-European *h₁pi Proto-Germanic *bider. Proto-Germanic *bi- Proto-West Germanic *bi- Old English be- Middle English bi- English be- English plaster English beplaster From be- + plaster.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To plaster over; to cover or smear thickly; to bedaub (with something).
   • A starving man, however, little heeds conventional proprieties, especially on a South-Sea Island, and accordingly Toby and I partook of the dish after our own clumsy fashion, beplastering our faces all over with the glutinous compound, and daubing our hands nearly to the wrist. 1846, Herman Melville, Typee, New York: Wiley & Putnam, Part I, Chapter 10, p. 91:
   • Yet with talents like these, and an excellent heart, The man had his failings, a dupe to his art; Like an ill-judging beauty, his colours he spread, And beplaister’d with rouge, his own natural red. 1774, Oliver Goldsmith, Retaliation: A Poem, London: G. Kearsly, page 14:
   • Even here, no movement of life is visible, but one who has lived and known towns like these feels for the first time an emotion of warmth and life as he looks at the gaudy, blazing bill-beplastered silence of that front. 1935, Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Book 1, Chapter 3, p. 32:
   • He pelted straight on in his socks, beplastered with filth out of all semblance to a human being. 1900, Joseph Conrad, chapter 25, in Lord Jim, Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood, page 273:

Forms

Translations (2)

de bedecken (to cover) · de bepflastern (to cover)