bedim

English

Etymology

From be- +‎ dim.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bɪˈdɪm/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪm

Verb

bedim (third-person singular simple present bedims, present participle bedimming, simple past and past participle bedimmed)

1. (transitive) To make dim; to obscure or darken.
   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:

     […] by whose aid, / Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm’d / The noontide sun […]

   • 1796 December 24–26 (date written), S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “Ode on the Departing Year”, in Sibylline Leaves: A Collection of Poems, London: Rest Fenner, […], published 1817, →OCLC, stanza IX, page 58:

     Now I recenter my immortal mind / In the deep sabbath of meek self-content; / Cleans'd from the vaporous passions that bedim / God's Image, sister of the Seraphim.

   • 1818, [Mary Shelley], chapter VII, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume III, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, →OCLC:

     Often, when all was dry, the heavens cloudless, and I was parched by thirst, a slight cloud would bedim the sky, shed the few drops that revived me, and vanish.

   • 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “The Gifted”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book IV (Horoscope):

     Read in thy New Testament and elsewhere,—if, with floods of mealymouthed inanity, with miserable froth-vortices of Cant now several centuries old, thy New Testament is not all bedimmed for thee.

   • 1875, Thomas Payne Westendorf (lyrics and music), “I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen”:

     "Your voice is sad whene'er you speak / and tears bedim your loving eyes."

   • 1905, James Hastings, Ann Wilson Hastings, Edward Hastings, The Expository times: Volume 16:

     There will be no folly, nor laughter, nor bedimming of truth […]

Derived terms

• unbedimmed

 

Translations

to make dim or to darken

• Maori: parekohu, whakarehurehu

Anagrams

• imbed