Stippled is the past form of stipple, and — more usefully for a learner — it is the adjective you will actually meet most often. It describes a surface, a picture or a pattern that is made of, or covered in, many small dots or dabs rather than smooth lines: a stippled drawing, a stippled ceiling, stippled glass. When you see it in front of a noun, it is telling you about texture: slightly rough, speckled, built from little marks. Decorators talk about a stippled finish on paint or plaster, which hides imperfections and catches light unevenly. Illustrators talk about a stippled shadow, built dot by dot. Writers stretch it to describe anything that looks dotted or speckled — 'the pavement was stippled with rain', 'shoulders stippled with freckles', 'the wall was stippled with light through the leaves'. In that stretched use it is a slightly literary word, chosen because it is more exact and more visual than 'spotted'. It also appears as the plain past tense: 'he stippled the background for three hours'.

（表面）點狀質感的、用點畫成的；當動詞時是 stipple 的過去式。講油漆牆面的「點狀紋理」或素描的「點描陰影」都用它。