dotting

Pluraldottings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of dot.

   The painter kept dotting the canvas with flecks of white.

   Dotting each letter neatly took her longer than writing the words.

   Note

   The -ing form doubles the final t of dot, as short verbs ending in a single vowel and consonant do. One spelling serves every use of the verb: spotting a surface with paint, adding dots to letters, and even the colloquial sense of punching someone. When it names a speckled pattern rather than an action, it has become the noun for a speckling.

2. 2
   noun

   A pattern formed by scattered small spots; a light speckling spread across a surface.

   A delicate dotting of lichen marked the old stone wall.

   The potter glazed the bowl with a fine dotting of copper green.

   Similarsprinkling, speckling, scattering, stippling

   Note

   A countable noun that usually takes of followed by whatever forms the spots: a dotting of lichen, a dotting of glaze. Because it counts, it readily goes plural. Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children (2011) has "stubborn dottings of mold" on a basement wall. Here the plural pictures separate scattered spots rather than one even spread.

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