blotchy

adjectiveB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — blotch sits at #12,801neutral

Blotchy means covered in uneven patches of colour. A face gone red in irregular blooms after crying, or after cold.

Skin is usually what is blotchy: blotchy cheeks, a blotchy rash, blotchy legs after a hot bath. It stretches to anything patchy — blotchy paintwork, a blotchy print where the ink went on unevenly. Behind it sits the noun blotch, a single irregular patch, a close relative of blot. Blotchy is never a compliment: the neutral word for the same thing is patchy, and the flattering one is dappled.

Definitions of blotchy

1adjectiveblotchyCovered in irregular patches of colour.B2
“Her face was blotchy from the cold.”
synonyms: patchy, mottled

Where it comes from

From blotch + -y.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 17 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

blotchy in the wild

The blotchy swellshark or Japanese swellshark (Cephaloscyllium umbratile) is a common species of catshark, belonging to the family Scyliorhinidae.
Blotchy swellshark
Voracious and opportunistic in feeding habits, the blotchy swellshark is known to consume numerous types of fishes and invertebrates, including an unusually high diversity of cartilaginous fishes.
Blotchy swellshark
The common smoky honeyeater can be identified by its charcoal-colored body and blotchy neon orange circle around its eyes..
Common smoky honeyeater
Adults are blotchy brown with a scattering of white spots on the wings.
Merodictya
The brown scales darken the first lobe rather evenly, but are more or less blotchy elsewhere.
Hellinsia cadmus

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

blotch

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