stipple
Americanverb (used with object)
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stipples,
present (3rd person singular)
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stippled,
past participle, past
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stippling
present participle
noun
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the method of painting, engraving, etc., by stippling.
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stippled work; a painting, engraving, or the like, executed by means of dots or small spots.
verb
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to draw, engrave, or paint using dots or flecks
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to apply paint, powder, etc, to (something) with many light dabs
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to give (wet paint, cement, etc) a granular effect
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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stipplesimple
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stipplessimple
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have stippledperfect
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has stippledperfect
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am stipplingprogressive
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are stipplingprogressive
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is stipplingprogressive
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have been stipplingperfect progressive
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has been stipplingperfect progressive
Past
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stippledsimple
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had stippledperfect
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was stipplingprogressive
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were stipplingprogressive
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had been stipplingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of stipple
1660–70; < Dutch stippelen, frequentative of stippen to dot, derivative of stip dot
Explanation
If you stipple something, that means you add tiny dots of color or texture, such as using a special painting tool to stipple a plain wall with dots of a different color to make it look more interesting. The verb stipple came into English from the Dutch word stippelen, meaning "to spot or dot.” Artist stipple paint onto their canvases and from the distance, the dots look like a field of flowers. You can also stipple metal, by poking it with a tool that creates little circular dents — that look like dots — to give it an artistic look.
Vocabulary lists containing stipple
Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"
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Frightful's Mountain
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A Good Girl's Guide to Murder
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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:
Microscopic chasms forming a sea of conical jagged peaks stipple the surface of a material called black silicon.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 16, 2024
Also known as acoustical stipple ceilings, they were once a popular choice for their ability to absorb sound and hide imperfections.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 2, 2024
I introduced a forehead piece to the existing Stage 3 look and added old-age stipple around the eyes, along with eyebrow hair pieces.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 1, 2024
Palm trees and cactuses stipple the town, and reddish buttes rise in the distance.
From New York Times ● Jun. 15, 2023
He’s wearing the uniform of the Guardians, but his cap is tilted at a jaunty angle and his sleeves are rolled to the elbow, showing his forearms, tanned but with a stipple of dark hairs.
From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
And that is not even her breeding plumage, when her eyes turn aquamarine, with matching stipples around the edges, and the inside of her mouth turns cobalt blue.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 21, 2024
In one grouping, she experiments with iterative ways of filling the squares, or shading a given area with stripes and stipples.
From New York Times ● Feb. 1, 2023
But it gets lost in much of the black-and-white coverage of circumstances that have at least a few stipples of gray.
From New York Times ● May 8, 2021
His globs and stipples and smears — seemingly brisk and impulsive, but painstakingly applied and endlessly revised — ravished.
From New York Times ● Mar. 9, 2017
The rare mezzotints, stipples, and delicate line engravings, to say nothing of the more valuable colour prints, often realize far more than the books themselves.
From Chats on Household Curios by Fred. W. (Frederick William) Burgess
Every flat surface and hidey-hole of this bridge is stuffed and stippled with nests.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 21, 2024
In front of me, a sheer wall of stippled gneiss.
From New York Times ● Aug. 22, 2022
He applies a lacquer thinner to the stencil to partially dissolve it, thus yielding a stippled image.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 8, 2022
The stippled pattern is associated with Olokun, a spirit the Edo believe resides in a palace beneath the sea and rules over water deities.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 3, 2021
Goose bumps stippled his bare arms despite the heat, but he did his best to ignore them too, and continued his counting.
From "Beasts of Prey" by Ayana Gray
The sun filtered through a parade of maple and ash beyond the trailhead, stippling the wildflowers below.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 10, 2021
Patients sign up online, paying an average of $600 each for a stippling of shots across their foreheads.”
From Fox News ● Jun. 4, 2020
Compare stippling the pages with water spots, unable to put your arms down, with balancing an ashtray on the rim of the tub, unable to put one arm down.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 25, 2019
The initial damage usually shows up as light yellow or gray stippling on the surface of the leaves, but as populations increase, the severity of the damage increases.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 20, 2018
The best colour we reach is got by stippling; but this not quite right.
From The Crown of Wild Olive also Munera Pulveris; Pre-Raphaelitism; Aratra Pentelici; The Ethics of the Dust; Fiction, Fair and Foul; The Elements of Drawing by John Ruskin
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.
