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
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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
The other forms, such as drabbe, dregg, and dragan, the b and v being analogous to E. draggle, drabble, draught, draft, all equally from dragan.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 34, August, 1860 by Various
To befoul with rain and mud; to drabble.
From Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (2nd 100 Pages) by Webster, Noah
Looking out on a landscape that was like a Christmas card, and remembering the drabble and jangle of the town, we were not sorry to be among the clean white hills.
From Dwellers in Arcady The Story of an Abandoned Farm by Fogarty, Thomas
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
“It’s not too much to claim,” the author Margaret Drabble was quoted as saying in Ms. Goodings’s memoir, “that Virago Modern Classics changed the course of English literary history.”
From New York Times ● Oct. 29, 2022
"We have got two fantastic bays and then someone comes along and wants to poison our waters," as Drabble puts it.
From BBC ● Feb. 14, 2022
Mrs. Drabble shall make me a good strong cup of tea when I get home.'
From Uncle Max by Carey, Rosa Nouchette
The half-dozen drabbled dragons pranced and writhed and reared proudly.
From Time Magazine Archive
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 Smith, Alice Prescott
It was a wild goose, limp and drabbled, and Sara looked up in surprise at the boy.
From Sara, a Princess by Newberry, Fannie E.
Poodles had told his own story after changing his drabbled garments.
From Breaking Away or The Fortunes of a Student by Kilburn
Down on the wharf Betty and Eleanor were curled up close together in an indiscriminate, happy tangle of rain-coat, golf-cape, and very drabbled muslin, holding a conversation that neither would ever forget.
From Betty Wales Freshman by Dunton, Edith K.
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
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 Paine, Albert Bigelow
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 McGuffey, William Holmes
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 Moodie, Susanna
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.
