Pronunciations (3)
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/bɪˈdaɪz(ə)n/
Pronunciation notes
- Received-Pronunciation
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/bɪˈdaɪzən/
Pronunciation notes
- General-American
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bɪˈdaɪzən
Verb
To dress or ornament (someone or something), especially in a gaudy, showy, or tasteless manner.
Usage- also
- Figurative
- Literary
- Transitive
- Synonyms
- Examples
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More examples (2)
Self is a great Fop and a great Slattern: Soul has given her very good Cloaths, fine Ornaments, plain and neat, but Self either leaves them, like a Slut, in every Corner of the Houſe; or vvhen ſhe puts them on, ſhe does bedizen them vvith Lace and Embroidery, Fringes and Ruffles, Patches, and Povvder, that you can hardly ſee enough of the Garment to diſtinguiſh the excellent Stuff vvhich it is made of: […]
Thus the Violet that gayly bedizens the Mead / A fragrance more ſvveet does ſupply, / Tho' oft' rudely bruſh'd by the Traveller's tread, / Than if rear'd in the garden hard bye.
[T]he whole [group] had been bedizzened out, into a burlesque imitation of an antique masque.
More examples (6)
You have bedizened me in green, a colour he detests. Lo you! let me have a blue robe, and—search for the ruby carcanet, which was part of the King of Cyprus's ransom—it is either in the steel-casket, or somewhere else.
They would rather see the rising generation exhibit a partiality for the tawdry tinsel in which a false philosophy bedisens its votaries, than find them intent only on the splendours of an unseen, and, to their low and sceptical minds, unreal state of existence.
The first who passed him was a man about thirty, with a gait at once jaunty and clumsy, and who was so outrageously bedizened with eye-glass, watch-chain, and stock buckle, gay satin waistcoat, and new white continuations meant to apologize for a seedy coat, as to give the idea of a servant out of place.
Suppose you get in cheap made dishes from the pastrycook’s, and hire a couple of green-grocers, or carpet-beaters, to figure as footmen, dismissing honest Molly, who waits on common days, and bedizening your table (ordinarily ornamented with willow-pattern crockery) with twopenny-halfpenny Birmingham plate.
I'm thinking you're too fine for the like of me, Shawn Keogh of Killakeen, and let you go off till you'd find a radiant lady with droves of bullocks on the plains of Meath, and herself bedisened in the diamond jewelleries of Pharaoh's ma.
[A] Frenchman, viewing the undraped statues which bedizen his native galleries of art, either enjoys them in a purely æsthetic fashion—which is seldom possible save when he is in liquor—or confesses frankly that he doesn't like them at all; whereas the visiting Americano is so powerfully shocked and fascinated by them that one finds him, the same evening, in places where no respectable man ought to go. All art, to this fellow, must have a certain bawdiness, or he cannot abide it.
Twenty-four hours later we were both in the vast halls of the Winter Palace in full uniform, as bedizened with gold as a nouveau riche’s drawing-room.
More examples (2)
She wore only the subtlest touch of make up and round her delicate throat only a single string of pearls. Among the hundred bedizened women she was a rarity.
Dolores flitted around the car, screaming like a banshee, her face bedizened with fury.
To make (someone or something) dirty; to bedaub, to besmear, to dirty.
Usage- Northern-England
- Literary
- Transitive
- Examples
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More examples (1)
Slinger brast aght o'th' door like a roarin lion,—but he wor sooin collard, an' he wor soa bedisend with soft cake an' puttaty pillins at his own mother could'nt ha owned him.
Verb
decorate tastelessly
dress up garishly and tastelessly
- Synonyms