dab

For the last few days, smack dab in the middle of his long-awaited breakthrough at USC, Arenas was sick.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 19, 2026

“We don’t want to live in fear, so we make ourselves useful working for organizations that move the scale away from fear and put us smack dab in the middle of love.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 14, 2025

A dab into the off side completed a sixth Test hundred and continued a remarkable record that has seen the left-hander make tons in his first matches in the West Indies, Australia and now England.

From BBC ● Jun. 20, 2025

"The chimpanzees dab them on their wounds or chew the plants up, and then apply the chewed material to the open injury."

From BBC ● May 14, 2025

But the girl smelled like her mother’s house, like the dab of perfume she had touched to her neck before school that morning.

From "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman

Sand dabs and halibut, still edible and plentiful there, were held in a net slung under the hull and served moments later.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 8, 2025

Both men pushed through the covers, Root played his trademark dabs to third man.

From BBC ● Jul. 10, 2025

Martha Stewart doesn't do warts, but Cutler edits a wry irony into the artful coverage she dabs on her blemishes, like her refusal to count her marital infidelity as equivalent to that of her husband.

From Salon ● Oct. 30, 2024

His voice was firm, doling out dabs of sweetness cut with the occasional thrilling yelp.

From New York Times ● Apr. 26, 2023

Partly it’s because my own normal work is sedentary, so that the housework I do—in dabs of fifteen minutes here and thirty minutes there—functions as a break.

From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich

In another, a grey-haired woman laid one hand atop the coffin while she dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

From Barron's ● Jul. 14, 2026

“It’s so difficult to explain,” said Gorden, now 33 and the captain at Angel City, as she dabbed at the tears with a tissue.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 10, 2026

In the rear open kitchen, Manon Fleury turned humble winter produce into memorable dishes: Fried sweet-potato threads mimicked a mini funnel cake, dabbed with loquat jam.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 14, 2026

It was a buccaneering innings full of trademark shots square of the wicket as he cut, dabbed, pulled and effortlessly flicked his way to three figures.

From BBC ● Dec. 7, 2024

She took it silently and dabbed her eyes and cheeks.

From "The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage" by Philip Pullman

Soon, these glasses would make him double over in laughter when she performed and cried, dabbing her eyes with tissue through the frame.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 3, 2026

We see through her eyes an assistant dabbing moisturizer on her hand, art installers asking where she wants a large sculpture, a man cleaning her pool who greets her.

From Salon ● Jul. 2, 2026

Inside, women are dabbing moisturizers, sampling eye shadows and swabbing lipsticks.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 8, 2025

"You have given him the best birthday gift he could ever have," she said, dabbing away tears and occasionally pausing to collect herself.

From Barron's ● Oct. 14, 2025

I look down from the stage and see Mom dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief in the front row.

From "Linked" by Gordon Korman