Definition of "dapple"

“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, 2004

A Sarronnese officer whom he did not know was leading a riderless horse, a dapple.

1996, L E Modesitt, The Order War‎

Some well-intentioned breeders inadvertently breed two dapples together because occasionally a dapple will have so few patches of mottled coloration it appears undappled.

2004, D Caroline Coile

Some dapple mists still floated along the peaks.

1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […]

I was on a running Morgan that could leave anything in six counties behind, and all she had was that short-hocked dapple pony.

1984, Dan Parkinson, Gunpowder Glory, page 103

Jt ſeemes it is in faſhion vvith you to ſugar your papers vvith Carnation phraſes, and dapple your ſpeeches vvith nevv quodled vvords.A figurative use.

1647, Theodore de la Guard [pseudonym; Nathaniel Ward], The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America. […], London: […] J[ohn] D[ever] & R[obert] I[bbitson] for Stephen Bowtell, […], page 77

Kris awoke with a start. Sweat dappled his forehead, and he brushed it away.

2006, Ace Edmonds, Bands, Part 2‎