drabble
verb (used with or without object)
to draggle; make or become wet and dirty.
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Drabble
DrabblenounDame Margaret, born 1939, English novelist, short-story writer, and biographer (sister ofA. S. Byatt ).
drabble
1 American
[drab-uhl]
/ ˈdræb əl /
verb (used with or without object)
drabbled,
drabbling
Drabble
2
American
[drab-uhl]
/ ˈdræb əl /
noun
Drabble
1
British
/ ˈdræbəl /
noun
drabble
2
British
/ ˈdræbəl /
verb
Etymology
Origin of drabble
1350–1400; Middle English drabelen < Middle Low German drabbeln to wade in liquid mud, bespatter, equivalent to drabbe liquid mud + -eln frequentative v. suffix; see drab 2, draff
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In the most memorable drabble to date, Perkins evidently struck a nerve among listeners by autobiographically focusing on her insecurities about her teeth and her kissing technique in her fictional romance with Jake Gyllenhaal.
From Slate ● Jun. 18, 2018
Why don't you say that Lew Alcindor plays "dribble drabble," and Johnny Unitas "punt punt"?
From Time Magazine Archive
There was a drabble of dead leaves on the sidewalk which was of wood, and on the roadway which was of macadam and stiff mud.
From Stories of a Western Town by Octave Thanet
The look of them clutched one's heart with horror and despair, as if one looked on a once lovely mother turned to a street drabble.
From Still Jim by Honoré Morrow
To befoul with rain and mud; to drabble.
From Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (2nd 100 Pages) by Noah Webster
The author was born Antonia Susan Drabble on Aug. 24, 1936, and published her first novel, “The Shadow of a Sun,” in 1964.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 17, 2023
She was the sister of the novelist Margaret Drabble, and the siblings drew parallels with the Brontes, a comparison they tended to spurn.
From Reuters ● Nov. 17, 2023
Mrs Drabble said she saved money on a wedding bouquet by getting a friend to make one from paper flowers, rather than fresh ones.
From BBC ● May 11, 2023
“Oh, I just love the organ,” said Drabble, a former schoolteacher.
From New York Times ● Jan. 25, 2021
But, with all her temper, neither of them could have spared Mrs. Drabble, she made them so comfortable.
From Uncle Max by Rosa Nouchette Carey
The half-dozen drabbled dragons pranced and writhed and reared proudly.
From Time Magazine Archive
Oh, but wa'n't she all drabbled and wet from the roads, and the world knows meself for a very tidy walker!
From The Queen's Twin and Other Stories by Sarah Orne Jewett
The drabbled plume of my hat swept the water, and I heard Labarthe curse under his breath, and beg me remember that the canoe was laden.
From Montlivet by Alice Prescott Smith
Our feet were wet as it was, and the man from Boston was sadly drabbled.
From The Mutineers by Charles Boardman Hawes
They were all drabbled with seeds and pulp, and some of the little fellows were perfectly soaked.
From The Flight of Pony Baker A Boy's Town Story by William Dean Howells
Slowly he raised his head and saw her, only a few paces away, eyeing him, her beak drabbling a spittle of venom, and a green ooze trickling from below her wounded eye.
From "The Two Towers" by J. R. R. Tolkien
I cared nothing for the wet grass, which was sadly drabbling my clean frock,—on and on I ran: I was so sure that I knew just where that rainbow ended.
From McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader by William Holmes McGuffey
They had got tired and gone to secluded corners, or to their rooms, or drabbling into the village.
From The Car That Went Abroad Motoring Through the Golden Age by Albert Bigelow Paine
Now, why am I compelled to wear long petticoats drabbling in the mud, when a Bavarian may wear hers up to the knees, and nobody think the worse of her?
From Flora Lyndsay or, Passages in an Eventful Life by Susanna Moodie
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
