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spot

noun · verb · adjective

Simple meaning

A stain or disfiguring mark.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

spaht
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈspɑt

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A stain or disfiguring mark.

  2. A round or irregular patch on the surface of a thing having a different color, texture etc. and generally round in shape.

  3. A mark on a die or on a playing card (shape depending on the suit)

  4. A symbol on a playing card, domino, die, etc. indicating its value; a pip.

  5. A small piece or quantity of something

  6. A small, unspecified amount or quantity.

verb

  1. transitive

    To stain; to blemish; to taint; to disgrace; to tarnish, as reputation.

  2. transitive

    To remove, or attempt to remove, a stain.

  3. transitive

    To retouch a photograph on film to remove minor flaws.

  4. transitive

    To cut or chip (timber) in preparation for hewing.

  5. transitive

    To see, find; to pick out, notice, locate, distinguish or identify.

  6. transitive

    To cover with spots, to speckle.

adjective

  1. informal

    Exact; precise.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A2 · Elementary
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A stain or disfiguring mark.

Used this way, spot is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Round

hot spotred spotparticular spot

Other combinations

blind spotbright spotsoft spotweak spotexact spot

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • spotsnounPlural form

    Spots before the eyes caused by opaque cell fragments in the vitreous humor and lens.

  • spottingnounInflected form

    The act of spotting or staining something.

  • spotternounInflected form

    A worker employed at a dry-cleaning establishment to remove spots.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • spot pricenounCompound term

    The current delivery price of a commodity traded in the spot market.

  • spot promoteverbCompound term

    Promote on the spot.

  • spot-weldnounCompound term

    Each of the welds made by welding at a separate point.

  • spot-weldernounCompound term

    A welder who does spot welding.

  • spot-weldingnounCompound term

    Creating an overlapping joint by welding at small points.

  • spotted antbirdnounCompound term

    A kind of antbird.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.