dabble

To make slightly wet or soiled by spattering or sprinkling a liquid (such as water, mud, or paint) on it; to bedabble.

The Itelians […] reſpectleſſe of gentry, of few words, for they barrell up commonly more then they can broach, and ſo may be ſaid to be like a great bottle with a narrow necke; yet they are moſt cunning and circumſpect in negotiating, ſpecially when they have bin tampering with the Vine or the hop, and are dabbled a little with their liquor.

If ſhe [the nurse] obſerves that the ſkin ſeems any where to be chafed, after dabbling the part very well with cold water, and drying it gently with a fine cloth, let her apply ſome common powder to it, by means of a ſoft puff.

To cause splashing by moving a body part like a bill or limb in soft mud, water, etc., often playfully; to play in shallow water; to paddle.

The children sat on the dock and dabbled their feet in the water.

The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles.

To feed without diving, by submerging the head and neck underwater to seek food, often also tipping up the tail straight upwards above the water.

When a duck dabbles its bill in mud, it is using the lamellae (transverse plates) on the inner edges of its bill as a highly efficient filter. As the duck dabbles, its tongue acts as a piston, sucking water or mud into the mouth and driving it out again. Only the edible particles are left behind on the lamellae.

To participate or have an interest in an activity in a casual or superficial way.

She’s an actress by trade, but has been known to dabble in poetry.

And now that I have finiſhed all the parts, which I propoſed to diſcourſe of; I will conclude all with a ſhort application to the Atheiſts. And I would adviſe them as a Friend, to leave off this dabbling and ſmattering in Philoſophy, this ſhuffling and cutting with Atoms.

To interfere or meddle in; to tamper with.

[A fellow of a college in Cambridge] freely confeſs'd, that he had for many Years been ranſacking Antiquity, in order to be the Author of ſome new Heresy or Opinion; and that after all his Searches, he cou'd think or fix upon nothing, but what on Fool or another had been meddling and dabbling with.

A spattering or sprinkling of a liquid.

Sir W. Rose has works that bear painful evidence of failing health; indeed, his group of the Duc et Duchesse d'Aumale (705), with the Prince de Condé and the Duc de Guise, is quite unfinished and even blotted. The face of the Duke is refined, but weak; the colour is pale, and the background only a dabble of unarranged and undrilled touches.

And then methought my dream changed, and two Great Giants with heading-axes came striding over the bed, […] And I woke up with my hair all in a dabble with the night-dews, with my Grandmother's voice ringing in my ears, "Remember the Thirtieth of January!"

An act of splashing in soft mud, water, etc.

Happily, however, he [the gnat] is born a swimmer and can take his pleasure in his native element, poising himself near its surface head downwards, tail upwards. Why chooses he this strange position? Just for the same reason that we rather prefer, when taking a dabble in the waves, to have our heads above water, for the convenience, namely, of receiving a due supply of air, which the little swimmer in question sucks in through a sort of tube in his tail.

After a dabble in a teaspoonful of water, and a scrape with a bit of an old sack, in a box, which is dignified with the title of "wash room"—for the American cars are, as it were, moveable hotels, with every accommodation complete (including what, I think, from a sanitary point of view, had very much better not be there), I took a walk up and down the train, with the rest of my fellow-passengers, and thereby improved my appetite for the breakfast which we were to take at a station down the road.

An act of participation in an activity in a casual or superficial way.

[…] I was induced to quit Leeds ſooner than uſual, as the concourſe of company which would aſſemble on that occaſion was expected to be very numerous and productive, and of courſe I could not idly let ſlip ſuch a lucrative proſpect but muſt have a dabble for the loaves and fiſhes.

From the separate little tracts and fragments which we have last noticed, (as well as the greater works, which contain a fuller development of his views on this subject,) it appears he slighted what has been termed Natural Theology. He was content with the Bible, without which Natural Theology is a dabble of inconclusive presumptions, and in connexion with which, however pleasing as a speculative inquiry, useless as a canon of faith, or a rule of life.