- 1
To dapple something is to mark it with spots — spots of colour, of light, or of shade. The sun coming through leaves does this all the time: the ground looks as if it has been painted with round patches of bright and dark. Water can dapple a wall with moving light. A painter can dapple a canvas; rain can dapple a window. The word feels a little literary. In everyday speech people more often say spot or speckle, but dapple has a softer, prettier feel, especially for light. The same word is also a noun: a dapple is one of those spots. The verb and the noun both came later than the old horse-colour word dapple-grey.
使布滿斑駁光影或色斑
組成Scholars are not sure. One idea is that it was pulled out of the older horse colour dapple-grey, and that dapple-grey itself was a twist on apple-grey — because the spots look a bit like apples. Old horse-colour names in Norse and German work the same way, and French pommelé (“dappled”) comes from pomme, “apple.” Another idea links it to Icelandic depill, “a dot, a spot.” The noun and the verb are both later, likely built from the adjective. Because nobody is sure, the honest answer is: we do not know.
同家族的字
- dapple-greythe older horse-colour word this likely comes from
- dappledthe adjective: marked with those spots
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
dapplenoun[ˈdæpəɫ]
- 1
A mottled marking, usually in clusters.
- 2
An animal with a mottled or spotted skin or coat.
- “My brother,” said he, “do not ride to–day / The dapple, as you’re wont; but mount the horse / Which I have chosen for thee.
- A Sarronnese officer whom he did not know was leading a riderless horse, a dapple.
dappleadj[ˈdæpəɫ]
- 1
Having a mottled or spotted skin or coat, dappled.
- Some dapple mists still floated along the peaks.
- I was on a running Morgan that could leave anything in six counties behind, and all she had was that short-hocked dapple pony.
dappleverb[ˈdæpəɫ]
- 1
To mark or become marked with mottling or spots.
- Jt ſeemes it is in faſhion vvith you to ſugar your papers vvith Carnation phraſes, and dapple your ſpeeches vvith nevv quodled vvords.
- dappling black on white with uneven strokes
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。