dab
A soft tap or blow; a blow or peck from a bird's beak; an aimed blowA soft tap or blow; a blow or peck from a bird's beak; an aimed blow.
Recorded US: Dvortygirl, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
Translations
1 languagesBy meaning 2
Meaning
10 sensesA soft tap or blow; a blow or peck from a bird's beak; an aimed blow.
Taps
A hip hop dance move in which the dancer simultaneously drops the head while raising an arm, briefly resting their face in the elbow, as if sneezing into their elbow.
a dance move in which the dancer simultaneously drops the head while raising an arm and the elbow in a gesture that has been noted to resemble sneezing
One who is skilful or proficient; an expert; an adept.
More meanings 7
A small amount, a blob of some soft or wet substance.
a dab of glue
Klacks, Klecks
A soft, playful box given in greeting or approval.
A small flatfish of the family Pleuronectidae, especially Limanda limanda; a flounder.
(US)A sand dab, a small flatfish of genus Citharichthys.
A small amount, a blob of some soft or wet substance.
(slang)A small amount of hash oil.
(UK, dated, in the plural)Fingerprint.
(obsolete)A dabbler.
Origin
From Middle English dabben (“to strike”), probably of North Germanic origin, related to OlFrom Middle English dabben (“to strike”), probably of North Germanic origin, related to Old Icelandic dabba (“to tap, slap”), perhaps ultimately imitative. Compare also with Middle Dutch dabben (“to pinch, knead, fumble, dabble”) (Dutch dabben (“(of a horse) to stamp with the forelegs”)), Dutch deppen (“to dab”), possibly German tappen (“to fumble, grope”).
Unknown. First use in print was in 1691, in The Athenian Mercury; it is also found in the Dictionary of the Canting Crew of 1698; see quotations for both. Originally used in the cant of criminals, and later in school slang. It may be a profound alteration of adept, likely from deliberate slangy usage thereof (rather than natural sound-change), which if true would give such earlier forms as *adep (or *dept) > *dep > *deb.
Late Middle English dabbe, of unknown origin; perhaps related to sense 1 (“to press against lightly”) as in "a soft mass dabbed down."
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Forms
plural: dabsSynonyms
116 synonymsWord family
10 related wordsSee also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.