dizen, to put flax on a distaff; ‘I dysyn a dystaffe, I put the flaxe upon it to spynne’, Palsgrave; to dress, attire, ‘bedizen’; ‘Come, Doll, Doll, dizen me’, Beaumont and Fl., M. Thomas, iv. 6. 3. In common use in the north country in the sense of ‘to dress showily’ (EDD.). See Dict. (s.v. Distaff).
dizling, (perhaps) making dizzy, confusing; ‘His torch with dizling smoke Was dim’, Golding, Metam. x. 6 (L. ‘Fax . . . lacrymoso stridula fumo’).
dizzard, dizard, a blockhead, foolish fellow. Brewer, Lingua, iii. 1 (end). A Yorkshire word; cp. ‘dizzy’, used in the north country in the sense of ‘foolish, stupid, half-witted’; OE. dysig (Matt. vi. 26, ‘stultus’).
do, to cause; ‘The villany . . . Which some hath put to shame, and many done be dead’, Spenser, F. Q. v. 4. 29; phr. I cannot do withal, I cannot help it, Middleton, A Chaste Maid, ii. 1 (Sir Oliver); ‘I could not do withal’ Merch. Ven. iii. 4. 72. ME. doon, do, to cause (Chaucer, freq.).
do way! forbear! Surrey, A Song, 21; in Tottel’s Misc., p. 219.
dob-chick, a dab-chick, a small diving bird, Podiceps minor. Drayton, Pol. xxv. 80; spelt dop-chick, Chapman, tr. of Odyssey, xv. 686. ‘Dob-chick’ is in common prov. use in many parts of England (EDD.).
docket, the fleshy part of an animal’s tail. Greene, James IV, i. 2 (Slip). Dimin. of dock, in the same sense. See NED. (s.v. Dock, sb.2 1).
doctor, a false die; loaded so as to fall only in two or three ways. A slang term; a ‘doctored die’, Shadwell, Squire of Alsatia, i. 1 (Hackum); Cibber, Woman’s Wit, i (NED.).
dodder, to tremble or shake from frailty; ‘Dodder grasses . . . so called because with the least puff or blast of wind it doth as it were dodder and tremble’, Minsheu, Ductor.
doddered: phr. doddered oak, decayed with age; ‘Dodder’d oak’, Dryden, tr. Persius, Sat. v. 80; Virgil, Past. ix. 9; ‘Doddered oaks’, Palamon and Arc., iii. 905; Pope, Odyssey, xx. 200. ‘Doddered’ is in prov. use in the north country in the sense of old, decayed, trembling: ‘A doddered old man’, see EDD. s.v. Dother, vb.1 1 (1)).