Bedizen

/bɪˈdaɪz(ə)n/ · verb

Meaning

(also figurative) To dress or ornament (someone or something), especially in a gaudy, showy, or tasteless manner..

Definitions by Sense

1. (also figurative) To dress or ornament (someone or something), especially in a gaudy, showy, or tasteless manner.
2. (Northern England) To make (someone or something) dirty; to bedaub, to besmear, to dirty.

Example Sentences

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.

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.

Synonyms for bedizen

Antonyms for bedizen

Related Words

Word Forms

• bedizens
• bedizening
• bedizened
• bedisen
• bedizzen

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

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