[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To furnish or adorn with jewels.
1601. B. Jonson, Poetaster, IV. i. You are as well jewell’d as any of them: your ruff and linen about you is much more pure than theirs.
1853. Motley, Corr. (1889), I. v. 151. Some few of the high Court ladies were well jewelled also.
b. Watch-making. To fit with jewels for the pivot-holes (JEWEL sb. 2 b). Usually in pa. pple.
1804. Nicholson’s Jrnl., VII. 204, margin. Jewelling the holes of timekeepers is injurious.
1844. Dickens, Mart. Chuz., xiii. A gold hunting watch,… jewelled in four holes.
1851. Illustr. Catal. Gt. Exhib., 1266. An eight-day watch,… 8 holes jewelled in rubies.
1858. O. W. Holmes, Aut. Breakf.-t., vi. (1883), 112. If a watch tells us the hour and minute, we can be content … though it is not enamelled nor jewelled.
2. fig. To bedeck as with jewels; to begem.
1859. Sala, Tw. round Clock (1861), 44. The cut flowers, too,… are here, jewelling wooden boards, and making humble wicker-baskets, iridescent.
1897. Beatrice Harraden, Hilda Strafford, i. 18. That tender rosy tint so dear to those who watch the Californian sky, jewelled the mountains and the stones, holding everything, indeed, in a passing splendour.
Jewel, dial. variant of JOWEL, of a bridge.
