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Spotty   /spˈɑti/   Listen
Spotty

adjective
1.
Having spots or patches (small areas of contrasting color or texture).  Synonyms: patched, spotted.  "The wall had a spotty speckled effect" , "A black-and-white spotted cow"
2.
Lacking consistency.  Synonyms: scratchy, uneven.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Spotty" Quotes from Famous Books



... detached fort on the peak of the hill, whence we looked down on Ushitza and all its environs; but I was disappointed in the prospect, the objects being too much below the level of the eye. The landscape was spotty. Ushitza, instead of appearing a town, looked like a straggling assemblage of cottages and gardens. The best view is that below the bridge, looking to ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... slash where the soft timber had been cut some time before. The land was covered with a thick, spotty growth of poplar and wild cherry and brush heaps and logs half-rotted. The piece of timber to which Solomon had referred was the base log of a giant hemlock abandoned, no doubt, because, when cut, it was found to be a shell. It was open only at the butt end. ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... think it is rather nice to be like one," she said in a woman's contradictory way. "And, Peter, dear, though I can't give them my fur, I wouldn't mind their building in it. Fancy a nest in my neck with little spotty eggs in it! Oh, Peter, ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... there win no least might, She is too spotty, grey and grim; Therein, moreover, is never night, Why should the moon fill full her rim To rival the all-glorious light That beams upon the river's brim? The planets are in poorest plight; The sun itself is far too ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett

... well as your spotty butterflies," answered the woman jealously. "That's nonsense, though. Don't mind me, Ban," she added with a wry smile. "Plain colors are right for you. Browns, or blues, or reds, if they're not too bright. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... on and on at a lazy mule trot, hearing the unwritten annals of the range from one who had seen them enacted at first hand. Pretty soon we passed a herd of burros with mealy, dusty noses and spotty hides, feeding on prickly pears and rock lichens; and just before sunset we slid down the last declivity out upon the plateau and came to a camp as ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... cast. The broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. His spear—to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great ammiral, were but a wand— He walked with, to support uneasy steps Over the burning marl, not like those steps On Heaven's azure; and the torrid clime ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... pictures?" asked Patricia in surprise. "I thought we told you it was remarkably spotty and ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... over her in cold, soupy odors, that left a feeling of a coating of grease over the surface of her. The poor filbert of gaslight burning into floor after floor of slits of hallway. The climb after a whole processional of spotty landladies whose shortness of breath contributed to the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... Russian protest crossed trails with the Palomar report, Washington looked like a kid with chicken pox, as dozens of spotty yellow windows marked midnight meetings of the nation's greatest minds. The military denied responsibility for cars older than 1942. Civil aviation proved they had no projects involving motor vehicles. Central ...
— Solomon's Orbit • William Carroll

... once more the spring winds, the lengthening days, the opening flowers, and the ever-renewing miracle of buds and blossoms on the apple-trees around the cottage. A year had passed since the June afternoon when first we showed you Mary standing under the spotty shadows of the tree, with the white dove on her hand—a year in which not many outward changes have been made in the relations of the actors of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... distribution of C. gymnurus is spotty; its occurrence seemingly depends on edaphic conditions. The isolation of soils with textures suitable to this animal has resulted in the isolation of gopher populations. The distribution is similar to that of species occurring ...
— Four New Pocket Gophers of the Genus Cratogeomys from Jalisco, Mexico • Robert J. Russell

... lived in and revealed to otters a world of his own, and might be said to have invented a new view of nature. He did not discover things out of nature, in fiction or fairy land, or make a voyage to the moon 'to descry new lands, rivers or mountains in her spotty globe,' but saw things in nature that every one had missed before him and gave others eyes to see them with. This is the test and triumph of originality, not to show us what has never been, and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... spoiled for lack of some perfectly silly little thing like a nutmeg grater or a hot water bottle! And oh, Mother, it's been so long since any one lived in the Rattle-Pane House! Not for years and years and years! Not dogs, anyway! Not a lemon and white wolf hound! Not setters! Not spotty dogs!—Oh Mother, just one little wee single minute at the door? Just long enough to say 'The Rev. and Mrs. Flamande Nourice, and Miss Nourice, present their compliments!'—And are you by any chance short a marrow-bone? Or would you possibly care to borrow an extra quilt to rug-up ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... James Period. Jim, if you like it better, or just plain 'Spotty.' That's what most of my friends call me. Get the idea? A period is a spot. I'm a Period, therefor I'm a spot. But that isn't the real reason. It's because I'm always Johnny on the Spot when anything is happening. If it's a big boxing exhibition, I'm there. If ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton

... Rim range. Mary Hope could not help hearing the whispers, could not help wondering if underneath them there was a basis of truth. Her father still believed, in spite of Tom's exoneration, that his spotty yearling had gone down the gullets of Devil's Tooth men. She did not know, but it seemed to her that where every one hinted at the same thing, there must be ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... bring home the cows he remained longer than even Granny could excuse. For that simple task should have been performed in a very short time. He could trace the cattle through the woods with the sure instinct of a sleuth-hound, could distinguish Spotty's tracks from Cherry's, and might have found his own little heifer's in the midst of the public highway. But his skill did not help to make him any more expeditious, for he often forgot his errand and would lie full length upon the ground, gazing up into the restless, swishing, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... every one as they went round. Mrs. Combermere's cloth of gold, Lady St. Leath's white hair. Poor Lady Mary—such a pity that they could not do something for her complexion. Spotty. Joan liked her. She did much good to the poor in Seatown, and it must be agony to her, poor thing, to go down there, because she was so terribly shy. Her next dance was with Johnny. She called him Johnny. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... and there were several who had not been to school before. One of these was Grandfather Frog, who was sitting on his big, green, lily pad. Another was Jerry Muskrat, whose house was out in the Smiling Pool. Spotty the Turtle was also there, not to mention Longlegs the Heron. You see, they hadn't come to school but the school had come to them, for that is where they live or spend most of ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... plane went up and up. At five hundred feet—nearly level with the roof of the Shed—it swung away and began to make seemingly erratic dartings out over the spotty desert land, and then back. Actually, it was a search pattern. Joe looked down from his side of the small cockpit. This was a very small plane indeed, and in consequence its motor made much more noise inside its cabin than much more powerful ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... their breath. But no! Red, to be sure, broke into the most awful demonstrations, and nearly burst himself with fury; but he backed away, as though the spectacle offered by the Leader were too disgusting for a decent dog to look at. He went behind the shack and told the Spotty One. In no time they were back, approaching the Boy and the fish discreetly from behind. Such mean tactics roused the Leader's ire. He got up and flew at them. They made it hot for him, but still the Leader seemed to be doing pretty well for himself, when the ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... of them all began loudly to bawl; The very mule smiled; the cock crew; "Little Spotty, my dear, you're a favorite here," They cried. "We all said it was you, We were so glad to give you your due." And the calf ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... a record showing there were seventeen cows on the farm in 1790, and for the benefit of some of the members of the younger generation who live on farms, here are their names: Cerloo, Red-heifer, Spotty, Debro, Beauty, Madge, Lucy, Daisy, White-face, Mousie, Dun, Rose, Lady Cherry, Black-eye, ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman

... a convenient height for rabbits. Ginger and Pickles sold red spotty pocket handkerchiefs at ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter

... Murderer, in my early youth, and added hundreds of times was there a mental compulsion upon me in bed, to peep in at his window as the dark twin peeped, and to revisit his horrible house, and look at him in his blue and spotty and screaming stage, as he reached from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall. The young woman who brought me acquainted with Captain Murderer had a fiendish enjoyment of my terrors, and used to begin, I remember—as ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... Gooseberries become gigantic. When it's rough in the Pacific Laying hens are less prolific. When the clouds are moving largo There is no restraining MARGOT. When their movement is con brio 'Ware CHIOZZA MONEY (LEO)! When the sun is bright but spotty Diarists become more dotty. When the sun is dim and hazy Diarists become more crazy. When the nights are calm and still Faster travels GARVIN'S quill. When the blizzard's blast is hissing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various



Words linked to "Spotty" :   inconsistent, patterned



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