Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A speck or small spot, as a natural dot of color on skin, plumage, or foliage.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A little speck or spot; a speckled marking; the state of being speckled: as, yellow with patches of speckle.
- n. Color; hence, kind; sort.
- To mark with specks or spots; fleck; speck; spot.
Wiktionary
- n. A small spot or speck on the skin, plumage or foliage.
- n. physics The random distribution of light when it is scattered by a rough surface.
- v. To mark with speckles.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A little or spot in or anything, of a different substance or color from that of the thing itself.
- v. To mark with small spots of a different color from that of the rest of the surface; to variegate with spots of a different color from the ground or surface.
WordNet 3.0
- v. mark with small spots
- v. produce a mottled effect
- n. a small contrasting part of something
Etymologies
- The noun is from Middle Dutch spekkel; the verb was later coined from the noun, in the late 16th century. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English spakle. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Thanks Laurie - it is a shame, whoever invents a way to keep the speckle will be my hero for life!”
“The ocean shore teemed with fish, crustaceans, and sea mammals, but one particular fish, called a speckle fish, was everyone's favorite.”
“SPR microscopy instruments driven by coherent illumination can suffer from dramatically reduced image quality due to interference effects, the so-called speckle artifact.”
“IC can form lacunas with diameters of up to several micrometers containing nuclear bodies such as speckle, Cajal and PML bodies”
“Even the teleporter has been upgraded -- say goodbye to the "speckle" and hello to the "swirl.”
“If a laser is projected onto such a surface the unique reflection can be captured as a unique "speckle" pattern by a digital camera and used as an identity.”
“The book is full of scientific observations of creatures such as the sea speckle, the red poison needle, the oleander, the bluebottle or coral.”
“Trees are snapped and the foundations of homes speckle the landscape.”
Voice of America: Indonesian Volcano Victims Turn to Tourism to Rebuild Their Lives
“Splatter, speckle, and stain your images in seconds with the iPhone app Goth Pix.”
The Huffington Post: John Paul Caponigro: Create Complex Grunge Photo FX With GothPix
“The less speckle face congressmen around the better.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘speckle’.
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Imprecise Units of Measurement
A list of terms for units of measurement that are less than exact, such as dessert-spoonful.
two shakes, dessert-spoonful, a pinch, a bit, some, smidge, smidgin, dollop, drop, fleck, smack, sprinkling and 187 more...
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Unknown
coalition, cabinet, tweet, defuse, steep, ancestral, mindset, breach, infraction, egregious, curb, backbite and 282 more...
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RELI - Genesis
Protagonists and relevant words in the Book of Creation (Source: King James Bible)
wrath, leaf, belly, prey, death, break, six, nod, dim, end, inn, judge and 1286 more...
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Pickle and such
Words that end like pickle. Listed here because they're funny (because they end like pickle).
pickle, sparkle, yokel, tinkle, fickle, prickle, trickle, circle, snorkel, ensnorkel, chuckle, buckle and 137 more...
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Hence
Words with definitions that have a "hence" in them.
hanger, Deet, tripe, spindlelegs, fiddle, store, pluck, snap, villain, link, comedy, particular and 410 more...
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Words For Novel (Part 3)
fibers, gypsy, polymer, schism, syphilitic garden..., holocaust, scrutinant, contemplate, aftermath, consequence, deadlock, impasse and 151 more...
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Mark
scrawl, blemish, spot, mar, damage, speckle, bespatter, splash, smirch, stain, tattoo, impress and 20 more...
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[Open] Frequentative
“A verb which denotes the frequent occurrence or repetition of an action, as . . . waggle from wag.” — Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia.
Other examples include bobble (bob), bustle (b...dartle, stutter, agitate, dabble, waggle, aid, argue, daunt, expect, excite, espouse, dictate and 77 more...
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Cloudy
with a chance of mizzle
puff, nebulous, fog, overcast, becloud, bedim, taint, befog, dapple, mottle, sully, pother and 83 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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Chennessy's Words
philistine, messianic, dyad, cult, bourgeois, blot, ploy, polyglot, lingua franca, cumbersome, lumber, petit-bourgeois and 446 more...
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diioxyde's Words
macabre, egypt, egyptology, queen, love, sex, sister, lover, web, cobweb, line, circle and 223 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, S
scrunch, solace, sabotage, saccade, sacerdotal, sacrilegious, sacristy, snappy, skew, steadfast, scowl, scorch and 781 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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Flutter
tuberose, golden apple, apple cider, unicorn, extraordinary, Pleiades, Merope, speckle, glitter, rose, pitter-pat, whale and 314 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for speckle.
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