SPECK • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Speck

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noun

Speck n. The blubber of whales or other marine mammals; also, the fat of the hippopotamus.

Speck falls (Naut.), falls or ropes rove through blocks for hoisting the blubber and bone of whales on board a whaling vessel.

Speck n.

A small discolored place in or on anything, or a small place of a color different from that of the main substance; a spot; a stain; a blemish; as, a speck on paper or loth; specks of decay in fruit. "Gray sand, with black specks."

A very small thing; a particle; a mite; as, specks of dust; he has not a speck of money. "Many bright specks bubble up along the blue Egean."

(Zool.) A small etheostomoid fish (Ulocentra stigmaea) common in the Eastern United States.

verb

Speck v. t. (past & past part. specked; pres. part. specking) To cause the presence of specks upon or in, especially specks regarded as defects or blemishes; to spot; to speckle; as, paper specked by impurities in the water used in its manufacture. "Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold."

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Etymology of 'Speck'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Speck" Quotes from Famous Books

... horizon, a brown wilderness dotted with ruins. Ruins of villas, of farms, of temples, with here and there a church or a monastery that told of the newer time. Olives in scant patches, a lost vineyard, a speck of tilled soil, proved that men still laboured amid this vast and awful silence, but rarely was a human figure visible. As they approached the city, marshy ground and stagnant pools lay on either hand, causing them to glance sadly at those great ...

— Veranilda • George Gissing

... overlooked in the wonder at seeing him lurch upward through the air, all glorious in black tights and yellow breech-clout. Up and up he soars above the tree-tops, and the wind gently wafts him along, a pendant to a dusky globe hanging in the sky. He is just a speck now swaying to and fro. The globe plunges upward; the pendant drops like a shot. There is a rustling sound. It is the intake of the breath of horror from ten thousand pairs of lungs. Look! Look! The edges of the parachute ruffle, and then it blossoms out like an opening ...

— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... the front of the line, his shaggy mane by which came his name floating over his shoulders. Out into the sunshine of a perfect day the riders went, and the group around the platform stood silently and watched until they were a speck in the distance blurring with the sunny plain and occasional ...

— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... laugh, Hugh, but I am in earnest. You have not watched the storms as I have; you do not know how suddenly they come. Even in the summer, a speck of a cloud will grow into a thunder-storm in a few minutes, and in the autumn the gales are fearful. I remember last year in September, two vessels were lost in plain sight from the bank where we were standing a moment ago. One came driving down the lake at daylight and went ...

— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... recently. But close by, behind the horizontal branch of the great oak, was a tangled patch of undergrowth and brambles, broken and pressed down in places, as though it had been entered by a human being. As Colwyn was looking at this place, his eye was attracted by a yellow speck in the background of green. It was a tiny fragment of khaki, caught on one of ...

— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

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