English
blot
Pronunciation Noun

blot (plural blots)

  1. A blemish, spot or stain made by a coloured substance.
    • circa 1595 William Shakespeare, Richard II (play), Act II, Scene 1,
      England, bound in with the triumphant sea
      Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
      Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
      With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
    • 1850, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter 17,
      Her utmost powers of expression (which were certainly not great in ink) were exhausted in the attempt to write what she felt on the subject of my journey. Four sides of incoherent and interjectional beginnings of sentences, that had no end, except blots, were inadequate to afford her any relief. But the blots were more expressive to me than the best composition; for they showed me that Peggotty had been crying all over the paper, and what could I have desired more?
    • 1918, Siegfried Sassoon, “The Death-Bed” in The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, London: Heinemann, p. 95,
      […] He was blind; he could not see the stars
      Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
      Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
      Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.
  2. (by extension) A stain on someone's reputation or character; a disgrace.
    • circa 1595 William Shakespeare, Richard II (play), Act V, Scene 3,
      Thy overflow of good converts to bad,
      And thy abundant goodness shall excuse
      This deadly blot in thy digressing son.
    • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Book of Proverbs 9:7,
      He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame: and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot.
    • 1785, William Cowper, The Task (poem), London: J. Johnson, Book 2, p. 46,
      Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
      And worse than all, and most to be deplored
      As human nature’s broadest, foulest blot,
      Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
      With stripes, that mercy with a bleeding heart
      Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
  3. (biochemistry) A method of transferring proteins, DNA or RNA, onto a carrier.
  4. (backgammon) an exposed piece in backgammon.
Translations Translations Verb

blot (blots, present participle blotting; past and past participle blotted)

  1. (transitive) to cause a blot (on something) by spilling a coloured substance.
  2. (intransitive) to soak up or absorb liquid.
    This paper blots easily.
  3. (transitive) To dry (writing, etc.) with blotting paper.
  4. (transitive) To spot, stain, or bespatter, as with ink.
    • The briefe was writte and blotted all with gore.
  5. (transitive) To impair; to damage; to mar; to soil.
    • c. 1590–1592, William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act V, scene ii]:
      It blots thy beauty, as frosts do bite the meads.
  6. (transitive) To stain with infamy; to disgrace.
    • Blot not thy innocence with guiltless blood.
  7. (transitive) To obliterate, as writing with ink; to cancel; to efface; generally with out.
    to blot out a word or a sentence
    • One act like this blots out a thousand crimes.
  8. (transitive) To obscure; to eclipse; to shadow.
    • He sung how earth blots the moon's gilded wane.
Translations Translations

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