English

A brindled cow

Adjective

brindled ‎(comparative more brindled, superlative most brindled)

1. of a brownish, tawny or gray colour, with streaks or spots; streaky, spotted
   • 1725, Pope, Odyssey (translation), book 10

     The palace in a woody vale they found,

     High raised of stone; a shaded space around;

     Where mountain wolves and brindled lions roam,

     (By magic tamed,) familiar to the dome.

   • 1853, Melville, Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!

     All round me were tokens of a divided empire. The old grass and the new grass were striving together. In the low wet swales the verdure peeped out in vivid green ; beyond, on the mountains, lay light patches of snow, strangely relieved against their russet sides; all the humped hills looked like brindled kine in the shivers.

   • 1862, Thoreau, Wild Apples: The History of the Apple Tree

     Apples, these I mean, unspeakably fair [...] - some brindled with deep red streaks like a cow, or with hundreds of fine blood-red rays running regularly from the stem-dimple to the blossom-end, like meridional lines, on a straw-colored ground, [...]

   • 1904, Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of Black Peter’ (Norton 2005, p.982)

     And there, in the middle of it was the man himself—his face twisted like a lost soul in torment, and his great brindled beard stuck upwards in his agony.

   • 1934, George Orwell, Burmese Days, Chapter 4,

     Some brindled curs hurried from beneath the houses to sniff at Flo […]

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