/spɛk/
OriginFrom Middle English spekke, from Old English specca (“small spot, stain”), from the same ultimate source as Proto-Germanic *sprakô (“spark”). Cognate with Low German spaken (“to spot with wet”).
- A tiny spot or particle, especially of dirt.
“a tiny speck of soot”
“[Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian”
“a. 1864, Walter Savage Landor, quoted in 1971, Ernest Dilworth, Walter Savage Landor, Twayne Publishers, page 88,
Onward, and many bright specks bubble up along the blue Aegean; islands, every one of ”
- A very small amount; a particle; a whit.
“He has not a speck of money.”
“not a speck of truth in her story.”
- A small etheostomoid fish, Etheostoma stigmaeum, common in the eastern United States.
- uncountableFat; lard; fat meat.
- uncountableA juniper-flavoured ham originally from Tyrol.
- uncountableThe blubber of whales or other marine mammals.
- uncountableThe fat of the hippopotamus.
- transitiveTo mark with specks; to speckle.
“paper specked by impurities in the water used in its manufacture”
“Each flower of slender stalk, whose head though gay / Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold, / Hung drooping unsustained, […]”
“Join'd to Theſe [birds], / Thouſands beſide, thick as the covering Leaves / VVhich ſpeck them o'er, their Modulations mix / Mellifluous.”
Formsspecks(plural) · specks(present, singular, third-person) · specking(participle, present) · specked(participle, past) · specked(past) · Specks(plural)