Mar 31, 2010

bedizen \bih-DY-zuhn\, transitive verb:

To dress or adorn in gaudy manner.

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At 18, he attended a party "frizzled, powdered and curled, in radiant pink satin, with waistcoat bedizened with gems of pink paste and a mosaic of colored foils and a hat blazing with 5,000 metallic beads," according to Michael Battersberry in "Fashion, The Mirror of History."
-- Donna Larcen, "Details Details: Everything Old Is New Again", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 19, 1994

. . .Ford's 2001-model F-150 SuperCrew "Harley-Davidson" model. This special edition pickup truck is bedizened with enough chrome, leather, and H-D logos to bring a RUBbie (Rich Urban Biker) weeping to his knees.
-- "Summer Autos 2001", Newsday, May 19, 2001

Bedizen is the prefix be-, "completely; thoroughly; excessively" + dizen, an archaic word meaning "to deck out in fine clothes and ornaments," from Middle Dutch disen, "to dress (a distaff) with flax ready for spinning," from Middle Low German dise, "the bunch of flax placed on a distaff."

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