spot-on

American

[spot-on, awn] / ˈspɒtˈɒn, ˈɔn /

Or spot on

adjective

exactly right or accurate.

His spot-on impression of the popular politician had us all laughing.
Thanks go to our colleague, whose analysis of the situation was spot on.

spot-on British

adjective

informal absolutely correct; very accurate

your prediction was spot-on

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of spot-on

First recorded in 1935–40

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.

"It was a challenging prediction, and we had to be spot-on," Barat says.

From Science Daily • May 7, 2026

Yet even if you were spot-on with your trading, a passive buy-and-hold stock portfolio still did better than your active one by 1 annualized percentage point between 1948 and 2018, according to Deluard.

From MarketWatch • Apr. 29, 2026

Service was polished, the vibe felt spot-on, and yes, everything was genuinely excellent.

From Salon • Mar. 31, 2026

The show’s creators couldn’t fathom mobile devices, but they were spot-on about video calling.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 30, 2026

My uprock was the best it’d ever been; my six-step was spot-on, and I dropped into a crab walk that morphed, briefly, into a cricket.

From "A Very Large Expanse of Sea" by Tahereh Mafi

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023