blotch
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: compound
Etymology: Uncertain. Perhaps a blend of blot + botch.
Compound parts: blot
botch
Inflected forms:
form: blotches
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: blotches
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: blotching
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: blotched
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: blotched
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: An uneven patch of color or discoloration.
pos: noun
examples: 1711, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator, London: J. & R. Tonson, 12th edition, Volume I, No. 16, p. 68,
[…] in healing those Blotches and Tumours which break out in the body […]
Since the day in which this reformation began, by how many strange and critical turns has it been perfected and handed down, if not, entirely without spot or wrinkle,—at least, without great blotches or marks of anility.
Snow lay on the croft and river-bank in undulations softer than the limbs of infancy; […] it clothed the rough turnip-field with whiteness, and made the sheep look like dark blotches;
1921, Wallace Stevens, Sur Ma Guzzla Gracile, Palace of the Babies, in Poetry, Volume 19, No. 1,
The disbeliever walked the moonlit place,
Outside the gates of hammered serafin,
Observing the moon-blotches on the walls.
gloss: An irregularly shaped area.
pos: noun
examples: At Coleman's Hill, the upper beds consist of yellowish, soft, gritty sandstone, containing some small calcareous fragments, a few pebbles of quartz, blotches of red shale, and fragments of sandstone with impressions of stems of plants.
His shirt showed big blotches of moisture, and the sweat was rolling in clear drops along the creases in his brown neck.
Microscopic and sometimes macroscopic examination of the apparently healthy intervening tissue may reveal the fungus connecting the blotches of diseased tissue.
Evil places where the wind whistles and the dust grates, places that are blotches of shadow, blotches of rust, blotches of oil: innumerable blotches.
gloss: Imperfection; blemish on one’s reputation, stain.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
examples: 1921, Warren G. Harding, Inaugural address, in Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States: from George Washington to Barack Obama, Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 1989,
There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.
gloss: Any of various crop diseases that cause the plant to form spots.
pos: noun
examples: The fungus causing blotch lives through the winter in the cankers which it has developed on twigs, water sprouts, and fruit spurs.
Blue mold and the black rot fungus are most Commonly found associated with blotch in this way.
Blotch is one of the most common and serious diseases of A. bisporus and is responsible for considerable losses.
Pseudomonas is the major spoilage genus associated with blotch in fresh mushrooms.
gloss: A bright or dark spot on old film caused by dirt and loss of the gelatin covering the film, due to age and poor film quality.
pos: noun
examples: Characteristics of blotches are that they seldom appear at the same spatial location in consecutive frames, they tend to be smooth (little texture), and they usually have intensity values that are very different from the original contents they cover.
Films corrupted by blotches are often restored in a two-step approach. The first step detects blotches and generates binary detection masks that indicate whether each pixel is part of a blotch. The second step corrects pixels by means of spatio-temporal interpolation.
Archive film materials are particularly degraded by blotch, scratch, flicker and noise.
gloss: A dark spot on the skin; a pustule.
pos: noun
gloss: Blotting paper.
pos: noun
tags: slang
gloss: To mark with blotches.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: 1770, Arthur Young, A Six Months Tour through the North of England, London: W. Strahan, Volume 2, p. 258,
Upon the whole, the spirit and relief of the figures, with the strength of the colouring, render it a most noble picture; and it is not done in the coarse blotching stile, so common to the pieces which pass under the name of Bassan.
A straight-edge is placed upon the chalk lines, with the edge next the line slightly raised, and the brush, well filled with colour, drawn along it, just touching the wall, the pressure being never increased, and the brush refilled whenever it is near failing; but great care must be taken that it be not too full, as in that case it will be apt to blotch the line, or drop the colour upon the lower portions of the wall.
Just beyond were two ancient stone pillars, weather-stained and lichen-blotched bearing upon their summits a shapeless something which had once been the rampant lion of Capus of Birlstone.
1918, D. H. Lawrence, Parliament Hill in the Evening in New Poems,
The houses fade in a melt of mist
Blotching the thick, soiled air
With reddish places that still resist
The Night’s slow care.
His strong skin was of the Norse snow-fed pallor that no sun ever tanned, no adolescence ever blotched.
Returning on time is crucial, because a late return can be considered a tardy, and too many tardies can blotch an employment record.
The only thing you can do in finishing that can't be fixed fairly easily is to blotch the wood with a stain.
There are some pointers which a hand operating an iron must keep in mind: If a brand is not burned deep enough, it will not peel, and if the iron is too hot, especially when a complicated stamp iron is used, it is pretty sure to blotch the brand.
A slightly incorrect choice of wood for the smoking fire or allowing the smoke to grow too thick can blotch its finish and result in a nearly unusable finished hide.
gloss: To develop blotches, to become blotchy.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: 1878, Arthur Morecamp (pseudonym of Thomas Pilgrim), Live Boys; or, Charley and Nasho in Texas, Boston: Lee & Shepard, Chapter 17, p. 166,
[…] when a man is going to drive cattle out of the county he has to put a road-brand on them […] It is generally made of letters or figures, or something that won’t cross lines, because where they cross they are apt to blotch and then it’s hard to tell what the brand is and who the animal belongs to.
Our waistline will extend a few more inches at least, and our aging skin will blotch and sag.
These areas, which also will take longer to dry, are the ones that will blotch when a dye or oil-based finish is applied.
The simpler the brand, the lesser the likelihood that it will blotch and be unsightly and hard to read.
Derived words: aspen leaf blotch miner moth
blotchily
blotchiness
blotchless
blotch on the escutcheon
blotchwork
blotchy
corn blotch leafminer
net blotch
pimple and blotch
plum blotch
side-blotched lizard
sooty blotch and flyspeck
sunblotch
unblotched
blotched
Translations: