bedim

present singular third person bedims · participle present bedimming · participle past bedimmed · past bedimmed

1. transitiveTo make (something) dim; to darken, to obscure.

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

   1905, James Hastings, Ann Wilson Hastings, Edward Hastings, The Expository Times, volume XVI

   5 more examples

   I haue bedymn'd / The Noone tide Sun, call'd forth the mutenous vvindes, / And tvvixt the greene Sea, and the azur'd vault / Set roaring vvarre: […]

   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], page 16, column 2

   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.

   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

   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.

   1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter VII, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume III, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC

   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.

   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)

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

   1875, Thomas Payne Westendorf, “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen”