Noun: dapple
| Singular | dapple |
| Plural | dapples |
Sample Sentences
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“My brother,” said he, “do not ride to–day / The dapple, as you’re wont; but mount the horse / Which I have chosen for thee. [1800, Samuel Taylor Coleridge tr., Friedrich von Schiller, The Death of Wallenstein, http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&vid=ISBN1419158775&id=bXOEL5RL6DsC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&sig=9x8UPZTbcIMkCOkMCSHT1YEwX9M 2004]
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A Sarronnese officer whom he did not know was leading a riderless horse, a dapple. [1996, L E Modesitt, The Order War:]
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2004, D Caroline Coile, http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&vid=ISBN0764126733&id=vmTgPakg8nUC&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&sig=5r0UWTYWxGcZayQlGiP4v3b1ajU
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Some well-intentioned breeders inadvertently breed two dapples together because occasionally a dapple will have so few patches of mottled coloration it appears undappled.
Nouns inflected like dapple
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. Uncertain. The adjective is first attested circa 1550 though the first element is already attested in dapple-grey as early as 1386, in Middle English, and later as dappled circa 1400; the OED suggests either:
2. * a back-formation from dapple-grey, itself a variant of apple-grey, compare possible cognates all said of horses: Old Norse apalgrár (whence Norwegian abildgrå and Swedish apel-grå), German apfelgrau. Compare also French pommelé (“dappled”), from pomme (“an apple”); or,
3. * a relation with Icelandic depill (“a dot, spot”).
4. The noun and verb are both later attested likely as back-formations. See: Old Norse Nouns '
apalgrár', Icelandic Nouns '
depill'.