dotted

1. 1
   adjective

   Formed from a series of separate dots rather than a continuous line or mark.

   The contract showed a dotted line where each party had to sign.

   Designers used dotted shading to suggest texture without solid fill.

   Similarbroken

   Oppositesolid, continuous, unbroken

2. 2
   adjectivefiguratively

   Covered with objects scattered irregularly across a surface or area.

   The old shipping chart showed a coastline dotted with tiny, unnamed islands.

   As the guests arrived, the lawn grew dotted with folding chairs and picnic blankets.

   Similarscattered, studded, speckled, peppered

   Note

   The figure turns scattered things into marks on a surface, as if seen from a distance. It usually takes with, which names what is scattered: a coastline dotted with islands. Stephen Crane drops the with in The Red Badge of Courage (1895), writing "the fields became dotted" just after the woods have "filtered men." The reader supplies the men as the dots.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of dot.

   The artist dotted the canvas with flecks of gold paint.

   Scattered farmhouses dotted the valley below the ridge.

   Note

   One spelling covers both past forms of the verb: she dotted the page, she has dotted the page. Because the verb is transitive, the participle also works passively, as in a page dotted with ink, and from there it shades into the "scattered across" adjective. It also serves the colloquial verb meaning to punch someone, so context decides what kind of mark was made.

4. 4
   adjective

   Of a note, written with a dot after it that increases its duration by half the value of the basic note.

   The melody opens with a dotted rhythm that gives it a lilting swing.

   She counted carefully through the long dotted half note.

   Note

   Musicians read the dot as "plus half": a dotted half note lasts a half note plus a quarter, which is three beats in common time. Rests take the dot in exactly the same way. A second dot adds a further quarter of the original value, so a double-dotted note runs to one and three-quarters of its basic length.

5. 5
   adjective

   Containing one or more dots, as in a notation or format that uses dots to separate elements.

   IP addresses are commonly written in dotted decimal notation.

   The library locates each module through a dotted path of names.

   Note

   In computing the dots are separators, and the name they build steps from the general to the specific. Burd, Burton and Felker's Java and Android Application Development (2012) gives java.util.Scanner, a fully qualified name that runs from package to class. Dotted-decimal IPv4 addresses work the same way: four base-ten numbers joined by periods. Here the dot is punctuation inside a name, not a mark on a surface.

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