Definition of "stipple"

Glory be to God for dappled things— / For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; / For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim: […]

1877, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Pied Beauty”, in Robert Bridges, editor, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published […], London: Humphrey Milford, published 1918, page 30, lines 1–3

Don’t you think, Major Vampyre, that eye-brow stippled very prettily?

c. 1760, Oliver Goldsmith, The citizen of the world: or, letters from a Chinese philosopher, residing in London, to his friends in the east‎, Letter 48

The worst drawings that have ever come from [ Turner’s] hands are some of this second period, on which he has spent much time and laborious thought; drawings filled with incident from one side to the other, with skies stippled into morbid blue, and warm lights set against them in violent contrast […]

1851, John Ruskin, Pre-Raphaelitism‎, New York: John Wiley, page 50

There were no footmarks on the ground, for each wind swept like a great brush over the sand surface, stippling the traces of the last travellers till the surface was again a pattern of innumerable tiny virgin waves.

1922, T. E. Lawrence, chapter 41, in Seven Pillars of Wisdom‎

Outside the car window was a glaze of darkness stippled with the gold of infrequent mysterious lights.

1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 10, in Babbitt‎

The biennial profusion of campaign billboards and posters stipples the land that Lady Bird wants to beautify and Lyndon yearns to own.

1966 October 14, “Charisma, Calluses and Cash”, in Time

Although he was clean-shaven, black Benday dots traced the narrow pathway of his thin mustache and the stippled edge of his jaw.

1988, Edmund White, chapter 5, in The Beautiful Room is Empty, New York: Vintage International, published 1994