fleck

American  

[flek] / flɛk /

noun

1. a speck; a small bit.

   a fleck of dirt.

2. a spot or small patch of color, light, etc..

   the dapple mare with flecks of gray.

3. a spot or mark on the skin, as a freckle.

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verb (used with object)

1. to mark with a fleck or flecks; spot; dapple.

   Synonyms:

   daub, speck, dot, spatter, bespeckle

fleck British  

/ flɛk /

noun

1. a small marking or streak; speckle

2. a small particle; speck

   a fleck of dust

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verb

1. Also: flecker.  (tr) to mark or cover with flecks; speckle

Other Word Forms

• fleckless adjective
• flecklessly adverb
• flecky adjective
• unflecked adjective

Etymology

Origin of fleck

1350–1400; Middle English flekked spotted; akin to Old Norse flekkr spot, streak, Old High German flec ( German Fleck ), Middle Low German, Middle Dutch vlecken to soil

Explanation

A fleck is a small patch that is different and stands out from the background, like the flecks of green in your blue eyes. A fleck can also be a fragment of something, like the flecks of peeling paint you might see on the floor in an old building. The noun fleck can describe a color or a spot of light that stands out, like a fleck of orange in a brown and white plaid, or the little bits of light reflected off a sequined top. It can also describe a particle, such as a fleck of dirt you track into your house on your shoe. Fleck can also be a verb that means dotting or marking something with little spots, like when you fleck paint on the wall to produce a random dotted effect.

Example Sentences

A nanoparticle is a fleck of material ranging in size approximately between 1 and 100 nanometers.

From Science Daily • Apr. 30, 2024

When they dialed the pressure back up to as little as 0.3 gigapascals, the blue fleck turned pink as the electrical resistance plunged to zero.

From Science Magazine • Mar. 8, 2023

You can see almost all the way through, like a fleck of sunlight on the bottom of a swimming pool.

From New York Times • Sep. 5, 2022

But he’ll turn 64 before next season, so we have accounted for the speck of a fleck of a prayer of a chance that he retires.

From Seattle Times • Feb. 15, 2022

When he raised it again and looked, the wizard was gone, and the sail of the boat was a white fleck on the waves eastward, heading towards the fat bejeweled islands of the inner seas.

From "A Wizard of Earthsea" by Ursula K. Le Guin

Related Words

• speck
• stripe