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
-
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
-
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
-
had blotchedperfect
-
was blotchingprogressive
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were blotchingprogressive
-
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
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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:
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
When consumptive Satine coughs into her handkerchief, she reveals the red blotch as any terminal operatic heroine knows to do.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 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
Instead, the club has just painted the ones around them the same color, redacting the branding, leaving a blotch that is supposed to erase the past but acts only as a reminder.
From New York Times ● Oct. 23, 2021
Franny was staring at the little blotch of sunshine with a special intensity, as if she were considering lying down in it.
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
A new study provides the first worldwide map of such regions, which show up on every continent except Antarctica like giant, angry skin blotches.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 26, 2024
“If it does easily, you may not need as much water. If it’s difficult to come out, or comes out in blotches, use the wet method.”
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 2, 2024
Maniac was covered with blotches — round, red blotches, all shiny from the bath water.
From "Maniac Magee" by Jerry Spinelli
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
An example of the founder effect is the cyclical dominance of three throat-color patterns in side- blotched lizards.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022
Altered taqpep genes were already known to cause blotched tabby patterns in cats, as well as king cheetahs’ unusually large spots and stripes.
From Scientific American ● Dec. 21, 2021
Cat would be sobbing, her tiny face blotched, and her mother rocking back and forth outside, both of them with nowhere to go.
From "Nory Ryan’s Song" by Patricia Reilly Giff
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
He was moving down the hallway, blotching like some misshapen toad in the shadowy light, lurching in his walk, that was, nevertheless, almost uncannily noiseless.
From The White Moll by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
Where the shade stopped abruptly, and beyond lay white moonlight with the ranch buildings blotching it here and there, he stopped and waited until Good Indian stood close beside him.
From Good Indian by B. M. Bower
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.
