Other forms: bedecked
To bedeck is to cover something with decorations. Bedecked with flowers, bedecked in ribbons, bedeck the hall.
It is nearly always passive and always slightly excessive, since bedecking implies more decoration than was needed. The deck in it is the old verb meaning to cover or adorn, the same one in decked out.
1verbbedeckTo cover something with decorations.
“The streets were bedecked with flags for the royal wedding.”
bedeck is a decorating.
Be- plus deck, an old verb meaning to cover or adorn, with cognates across the Germanic languages.
Middle Dutch
dec — roof, covering
Middle English
dekke
English
deck
English, today
bedeck
From be + deck. Compare West Frisian bedekke (“to cover”), Dutch bedekken (“to cover, coat, overlay”), German bedecken (“to cover, top, overlay”), Swedish betäcka (“to cover, shelter”). Doublet of bethatch. deck comes from Middle English dekke, borrowed from Middle Dutch dec (“roof, covering”), from Middle Dutch decken, from Old Dutch thecken, from Proto-West Germanic þakkjan, from Proto-Germanic þakjaną. Formed the same: German Decke (“covering, blanket”). a doublet of thatch and thack.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA