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Dab   /dæb/   Listen
noun
Dab  n.  A skillful hand; a dabster; an expert. (Colloq.) "One excels at a plan or the titlepage, another works away at the body of the book, and the third is a dab at an index."


Dab  n.  (Zool.) A name given to several species of flounders, esp. to the European species, Pleuronectes limanda. The American rough dab is Hippoglossoides platessoides.


Dab  n.  
1.
A gentle blow with the hand or some soft substance; a sudden blow or hit; a peck. "A scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak."
2.
A small mass of anything soft or moist.


verb
Dab  v. i.  (past & past part. dabbed; pres. part. dabbing)  
1.
To strike or touch gently, as with a soft or moist substance; to tap; hence, to besmear with a dabber. "A sore should... be wiped... only by dabbing it over with fine lint."
2.
To strike by a thrust; to hit with a sudden blow or thrust. "To dab him in the neck."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Dab" Quotes from Famous Books



... and I dare say I spent the best part of five minutes in such thoughts before I went below to find where the blessed dust was stored. It was slow work hunting, feeling it was for the most part, pitchy dark, with confusing blue gleams down the companion. And there were things moving about, a dab at my glass once, and once a pinch at my leg. Crabs, I expect. I kicked a lot of loose stuff that puzzled me, and stooped and picked up something all knobs and spikes. What do you think? Backbone! But I never had any particular feeling for bones. We had talked the affair over pretty thoroughly, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... equipped with a sub-space energizer big enough to get it into sub-space and return it to normal. Then there is a small propulsor unit with just enough energy to send it to the center of that mess. Then it returns to normal space smack dab in the center of the core asteroid. And when the asteroid matter and the trigger body matter try to occupy the same space at the same ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... being the rule in this department of industry), and attendant boys strolled up and down, picking the fleeces from the floor and carrying them to the sorter's table. One was the tar-boy, whose business it was to dab a brushful of tar upon any scarlet patch appearing upon a white under-coat where the shears had clipped too close. The sorter or classer stood behind his long table, above and at right angles to the lines of sheep-pens and shearers. Near him on either hand were racks like narrow loose-boxes, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... again. On one bank stretches a row of rookeries—a maze of hanging clothes, fish-nets, balconies hooded by awnings and topped by nondescript chimneys of all sizes and patterns, with here and there a dab of vermilion and light red, the whole brilliant against a china-blue sky. On the other is the long brick wall of the garden—soggy, begrimed, streaked with moss and lichen in bands of black-green and yellow ochre, over which mass and sway the great sycamores that Ziem loved, their lower ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... an accident. Indeed the exclamation of annoyance with which the culprit greeted his handiwork sounded so perfectly genuine that if I hadn't known what was in the note I should have been completely deceived. I saw the waiter step forward and dab hurriedly at the stain with a napkin, while the author of the damage, coolly pulling up another glass, helped himself to a fresh supply from the bottle. A more beautifully carried out little bit of acting it has never been my good luck ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges


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