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Glite Dictionary
bedaubed

bedaubed

9.8
Covered with too many bright, cheap decorations
  • adjective
  • /bɪˈdɔːbd/
translation icon : embadurnado
  • The walls were bedaubed with garish colors and glittering trinkets.

Examples

  • She arrived at the party bedaubed in cheap jewelry and flashy clothes.

  • The artist's new work is criticized as bedaubed rather than refined.

  • The bedaubed statue attracted a lot of attention.

  • I find her bedaubed dress quite unappealing.

  • The walls were bedaubed with garish colors and glittering trinkets.

  • She arrived at the party bedaubed in cheap jewelry and flashy clothes.

  • I find her bedaubed dress quite unappealing.

Antonyms

simple
220 1.0

Plain and without decoration

understated
27 6.5

Simple and quiet in a way that looks elegant

How Gaudy

bedaubed
9.8
ornate
  • Literature
26 7.0
decorated
2.7
plain
208 1.0

Surface Forms

bedaubed positive

Morphology

bedaubed = bedaub (transparent) = be + daub + ed

Formed by standard suffixation: the verb 'bedaub' takes '-ed' to give an adjectival past-participle meaning 'covered or ornamented in a showy way'.

Etymology

Bedaubed comes from the prefix be- and the word daub, which is like the small word dab and means 'to smear' or 'to cover with something messy'. So if something is bedaubed, it is like being 'smeared' with too much paint, glitter or cheap decoration, which is why the word means 'tastelessly or showily decorated'.