scumble

plural scumbles · alternative scrumble

1. countableuncountableAn opaque kind of glaze (layer of paint).

present singular third person scumbles · participle present scumbling · participle past scumbled · past scumbled · alternative scrumble

1. To apply an opaque glaze to an area of a painting to make it softer or duller.

   I want you to scumble the bottom third with sap green.

   1987, Bernard MacLaverty, short story. "The Drapery Man" (published in The Great Profumo and Other Stories, Jonathan Cape, 1987) - p.35

   3 more examples

   manure [...] dead leaves [...] and the odd unstomachable meal thrown or vomited there by this or that sensitive epicurean—all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the seasons, to an impasto, feet thick, of unbelievable topsoil in which anything could grow

   1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

   The moon was brilliant, the path a track of scumbled footprints in the snow, the air cutting and cold.

   2000, Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

   "Also —" indicating with the flat of his thumb the too-bright shine coming off the canvas: overly varnished. "I agree. And here —" tracing midair the ugly arc where an over-eager cleaning had scrubbed the paint down to the scumbling.

   2013, Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

2. To apply a painted pattern to the finish of a piece of furniture to simulate the woodgrain of another timber, as for example to give pine an appearance of oak.

   scumbled pine