Word.ws English Dictionary

blot out

blot out verb: used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blot, out.

Verb

blot out (third-person singular simple present blots out, present participle blotting out, simple past and past participle blotted out)

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blot, out.
  2. (transitive) To obscure.
    • The moon blotted out the sun and all was dark.
    • However, upon a ſtrict Review, I blotted out ſeveral Paſſages of leſs Moment which were in my firſt Copy, for fear of being cenſured as tedious and trifling, whereof Travellers are often, perhaps not without Juſtice, accuſed.1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “A Great Storm Described, the Long-Boat Sent to Fetch Water, the Author Goes with It to Discover the Country. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the...
  3. (transitive) To make indecipherable; to obliterate.
    • From the time he had left the house in Soho on the morning of the murder, he was simply blotted out; and gradually, as time drew on, Mr. Utterson began to recover from the hotness of his alarm, and to grow more at quiet with himself.1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Remarkable Incident of Dr. Lanyon”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 54
  4. (transitive) To annihilate.
    • And every living substance that I have made will I blot out from off the face of the earth.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 7:4

Forms of blot out

third-person singular presentblots out
present participleblotting out
past participleblotted out
pastblotted out

Questions about blot out

What does blot out mean?
Blot out means used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blot, out.
What part of speech is blot out?
Blot out is a verb.
What is the past tense of blot out?
The past tense of blot out is blotted out.

Words near blot out in the dictionary

  1. blossomy
  2. blot
  3. blot on the escutcheon
  4. blot one's copy book
  5. blot one's copybook
  6. blot out
  7. blot test
  8. blot tests
  9. blot up
  10. blotch
  11. blotch on the escutcheon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blot out (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “blot out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blot_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.