speckle

«speckle» in Mova's school dictionary: A small spot or mark of colour, one of many: "speckles of… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 4 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a speckle, speckles); verb (speckle, speckles, speckled, speckling); adjective (speckled)

meaning for a pupil

1) (noun) A small spot or mark of colour, one of many: "speckles of paint". tree →

2) (verb) To cover with lots of small spots. tree →

3) (speckled, adjective) Covered with many small spots: a speckled egg. tree →

sense in the lessons

In nature lessons speckles help camouflage: speckled eggs, speckled trout and speckled birds blend into stones and leaves. In art lessons speckling (flicking paint off a toothbrush) makes stars or sand. In stories "speckled with" describes a surface dotted with something: a sky speckled with stars, a face speckled with freckles. Phrases: speckled with, speckled hen, speckled egg.

examples

• The thrush's egg was blue with dark speckles. tree →
• Her face was speckled with mud. tree →
• We speckled white paint on black paper to make stars. tree →
• The speckled frog sat on a log. tree →
• The trout has a speckled back. tree →
• The floor was speckled with sawdust. tree →

note

"Speckled" (the adjective) is much more common than "speckle". Similar words: spot, dot, fleck, freckle. "Speckled with" + noun.

In the corpora

• Young gulls are brown and speckled; a herring gull takes about four years to look fully grown up.
• Granite is a speckled igneous rock with big crystals of quartz, feldspar and mica, formed deep underground.
• And the flocks conceived at the sight of the rods, and the flocks brought forth streaked, speckled, and spotted.
• Is My heritage unto Me as a speckled bird of prey?

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «speckle» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.