blotch
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
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blotches,
present (3rd person singular)
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blotched,
past participle, past
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blotching
present participle
adjective
noun
verb
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to become or cause to become marked by such discoloration
-
(intr) (of a pen or ink) to write or flow unevenly in blotches
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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blotchsimple
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blotchessimple
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have blotchedperfect
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has blotchedperfect
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am blotchingprogressive
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are blotchingprogressive
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is blotchingprogressive
-
have been blotchingperfect progressive
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has been blotchingperfect progressive
Past
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blotchedsimple
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had blotchedperfect
-
was blotchingprogressive
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were blotchingprogressive
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had been blotchingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of blotch
Explanation
A blotch is an uneven spot or blemish, like the itchy blotches you get all over your arms after tangling with the poison ivy in your back yard. Etymologists guess that blotch comes from blot, "spot or stain," influenced by patch — so you can think of a blotch as a patchy stain. The word is frequently used to describe skin that's discolored, like the blotches you get on your cheeks after crying, or the painful blotch on your back where you forgot to apply sunblock. Use it as a verb, too: "The ketchup squirted from his hamburger and blotched his new white shirt."
Vocabulary lists containing blotch
Selection Vocabulary 4, Unit 1
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Her zapping turns her entire head of hair — not just a streak — shocking white à la Jean Harlow, and leaves an oddly-appealing black blotch on her cheek.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 4, 2026
I also had a little red blotch of skin, but as I said, my thighs rub together, so maybe it was nothing?
From Slate ● Mar. 13, 2024
“You can’t squirt a polar bear with a blotch of paint,” Laidre says.
From New York Times ● Feb. 15, 2022
Vineyards at harvest time are a popular subject for photographers and romantics, but those beautiful red leaves betray a disease called red blotch virus.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 10, 2022
She was looking at a little warm blotch of sunshine, about the size of a poker chip, on the tablecloth.
From "Franny and Zooey" by J. D. Salinger
Elderly immigrants showed off injuries they claimed were caused by the noxious air: strange blotches on their skin, temples rubbed raw due to watery eyes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2026
The house’s roof, the front steps and the driveway were spattered with white blotches, as if the area had been the site of a fierce paintball battle.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 16, 2026
But other populations are bright green and lack blotches, making them look almost identical to the redtail pit viper.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 21, 2026
In its state of abandoned tear-down, the venue offers melodious visual rhymes: electrical cords dangling from the ceiling ape Wool’s snarls of found-wire sculpture; crumbling plaster mirrors the attitudinal blotches of his oils and inks.
From New York Times ● May 2, 2024
And the sagging cheeks, with those purplish blotches.
From "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
My notebook pages are wet and blotched by water!
From Salon ● May 28, 2025
Creamy white blooms blotched with maroon centers flood the late spring garden with sweet perfume.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 9, 2024
His books sell so well that even the pirated copies still circulate widely, disseminating his trademark wit and wry, earthy humor with uneven margins and blotched text.
From New York Times ● Apr. 7, 2023
An example of the founder effect is the cyclical dominance of three throat-color patterns in side- blotched lizards.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022
There it was, wrapped in its blotched green cloth. said Doon.
From "The City of Ember" by Jeanne DuPrau
Between those two ranges, in central Myanmar, researchers found an unusual population of green snakes with different amounts of blotching.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 21, 2026
In 2005, in the same journal, Annette Upfal gave a name to the blotching of the face—idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura—and proposed that Austen had died from Hodgkin’s disease.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 5, 2017
The blotching spread until it brought about the depigmentation suddenly observed by Will White after his bath.
From Time Magazine Archive
Each variety, whatever its parentage may have been, retained all its characters perfect, and there was no streaking or blotching of the colours, as in the foregoing plants of crossed origin.
From Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom by Charles Darwin
The sulphurous fumes of the big smelter blotching the southern sky with saffron and coppery red clouds indicated that we were nearing Trail.
From Down the Columbia by Lewis R. (Lewis Ransome) Freeman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
