blot

From Middle English blot (“blot, spot, stain, blemish”). Perhaps from Old Norse blettr (“blot, stain”), or from Old French bloche (“clod of earth”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /blɒt/
• Rhymes: -ɒt
• (General American) IPA^(key): /blɑt/

• Audio (US)

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blot (plural blots)

1. A blemish, spot or stain made by a coloured substance.
   • c. 1595, William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act II, Scene 1,

     England, bound in with the triumphant sea

     Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege

     Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,

     With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:

   • 1850, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter 17,

     Her utmost powers of expression (which were certainly not great in ink) were exhausted in the attempt to write what she felt on the subject of my journey. Four sides of incoherent and interjectional beginnings of sentences, that had no end, except blots, were inadequate to afford her any relief. But the blots were more expressive to me than the best composition; for they showed me that Peggotty had been crying all over the paper, and what could I have desired more?

   • 1918, Siegfried Sassoon, “The Death-Bed” in The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, London: Heinemann, p. 95,

     […] He was blind; he could not see the stars

     Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;

     Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,

     Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.

2. (by extension) A stain on someone's reputation or character; a disgrace.
   • c. 1595, William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act V, Scene 3,

     Thy overflow of good converts to bad,

     And thy abundant goodness shall excuse

     This deadly blot in thy digressing son.

   • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Proverbs 9:7,

     He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame: and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot.

   • 1785, William Cowper, The Task (poem), London: J. Johnson, Book 2, p. 46,

     Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;

     And worse than all, and most to be deplored

     As human nature’s broadest, foulest blot,

     Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat

     With stripes, that mercy with a bleeding heart

     Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.

3. (biochemistry) A method of transferring proteins, DNA or RNA, onto a carrier.
4. (backgammon) an exposed piece in backgammon.

blot (third-person singular simple present blots, present participle blotting, simple past and past participle blotted)

1. (transitive) to cause a blot (on something) by spilling a coloured substance.
2. (intransitive) to soak up or absorb liquid.

   This paper blots easily.

3. (transitive) To dry (writing, etc.) with blotting paper.
4. (transitive) To spot, stain, or bespatter, as with ink.
   • Gascoigne

     The briefe was writte and blotted all with gore.

5. (transitive) To impair; to damage; to mar; to soil.
   • Shakespeare

     It blots thy beauty, as frosts do bite the meads.

6. (transitive) To stain with infamy; to disgrace.
   • Rowe

     Blot not thy innocence with guiltless blood.

7. (transitive) To obliterate, as writing with ink; to cancel; to efface; generally with out.

   to blot out a word or a sentence

   • Dryden

     One act like this blots out a thousand crimes.

8. (transitive) To obscure; to eclipse; to shadow.
   • Cowley

     He sung how earth blots the moon's gilded wane.

• Bolt, bolt

blot

1. (slightly formal) only, merely

• kun, bare

From Old Norse blót, from Proto-Germanic *blōtą.

blot

1. a sacrifice, especially a blood sacrifice by heathens.

blot

1. neuter nominative of blo
2. neuter accusative of blo

From Proto-Germanic *blōtą.

• IPA^(key): /bloːt/

blōt n

1. a sacrifice, especially a blood sacrifice by heathens.

   He ealle ða cuman to blote gedyde: he gave all the strangers as a sacrifice. (Alfred's Orosius)