Word.ws English Dictionary

dot

UK/dɒt//dɑt/

dot noun: a small, round spot. Also the clipping of dotty.

Noun (1)

dot (plural dots)

  1. A small, round spot.
    • a dot of colour
    • Long stood Sir Bedivere / Revolving many memories, till the hull / Look’d one black dot against the verge of dawn / And on the mere the wailing died away.1845, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Morte d’Arthur”, in Poems, lines 269–272
    Synonyms:
    speck, spot
  2. A punctuation mark used to indicate the end of a sentence or an abbreviated part of a word; a full stop; a period.
    • The homepage of English Wiktionary is en.wiktionary.org. [read aloud: E-N-dot-wiktionary-dot-org]
    Synonyms:
    full stop, period, point
  3. A point used as a diacritical mark above or below various letters of the Latin script, as in Ȧ, Ạ, Ḅ, Ḃ, Ċ.
  4. A symbol used for separating the fractional part of a decimal number from the whole part, for indicating multiplication or a scalar product, or for various other purposes.
    Synonyms:
    decimal point
  5. In musical notation, a symbol in the form of a small point placed after a note, indicating that its duration is to be augmented by 50%.
  6. One of the two symbols used in Morse code.
    • The alphabetical signals are made up of combinations of dots and of lines of different lengths.1838, William Hamilton, “Report on Prof. Morse’s Electro-Magnetic Telegraph”, in Journal of the Franklin Institute
    Synonyms:
    dit
  7. (obsolete) A lump or clot.
    Synonyms:
    blob
  8. Anything small and like a speck comparatively; a small portion or specimen.
    • a dot of a child
  9. (informal) A dot ball.
    • That left 15 needed from Boult's final set. Two dots were followed by a heave over deep mid-wicket, then came the outrageous moment of fortune.2019 July 14, Stephan Shemilt, “England win Cricket World Cup: Ben Stokes stars in dramatic finale against New Zealand”, in BBC Sport, London
  10. (Multicultural-London-English) buckshot, projectile from a "dotty" or shotgun
    • Can’t miss no dots
      Every shot let caused I’m hittin
      Used to bag it up in the toilet
      My mumsie thought I was shittin2018, “Rolling Round”, HL8 and SimpzBeatz (music), performed by Sparko of OMH
    Synonyms:
    shotty
  11. (Multicultural-London-English, rare, slang) confinement facility
    • The feds want me in the dot
      I got luck for selling them drugs
      But when I come out I’m still building a spot2024 March 17, “Scummy” (0:31 from the start), Trizz #Birmingham (lyrics)
    Synonyms:
    slammer, can, bin

Proper noun (1) capitalized: DOT

DOT

  1. (US, abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Department of Transportation or Department of Transport.
    • Alaska DOT crews returned to Igiugig on Tuesday to repair the lights, which are now back in service, Dapcevich said.2020 September 1, Christina Zdanowicz, “When the runway lights failed, Alaska residents used their car headlights to land a medevac plane”, in CNN
  2. (Philippines, abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Department of Tourism.

Noun (2) capitalized: DOT

DOT (countable and uncountable, plural DOTs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of disodium octaborate tetrahydrate.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of damage over time.
    Antonyms:
    HOT
  3. (broadly) A weapon or ability that deals damage over time as opposed to or in addition to direct damage.

Noun (3) capitalized: DoT

DoT (plural DoTs)

  1. (alternative) Alternative spelling of DOT.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Dot

Dot

  1. A diminutive of the female given name Dorothy.

Also used as

dot is also the clipping of dotty.

dot is also the clipping of dotfile.

dot meaning in Gujarati, Odia and Nepali

dot in Gujarati

ડોટ

dot in Odia

ଡଟ୍, ଡାଟ୍

dot in Nepali

डट, डोट

Examples of dot in a sentence

  • He was bewildered by how the car was festooned with polka dots.
  • My editor is very finicky about punctuation. Every dot and comma has to be just right.
  • If you join up the dots, you will reveal a picture.

All 40 example sentences with dot

Synonyms of dot

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms of dot

Forms of dot

Noun
pluraldots
pluralDOTs
pluralDoTs
Proper noun
alternative formD.O.T.
alternative formD. O. T.
alternative formDoT
alternative formd.o.t.

Plural of dot: dots

Origin of dot

From Middle English *dot, dotte, from Old English dott (“a dot, point”), from Proto-West Germanic *dott, from Proto-Germanic *duttaz (“wisp”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Dot, Dotte (“a clump”), Dutch dot (“lump, knot, clod”), Low German Dutte (“a plug”), dialectal Swedish dott (“a little heap, bunch, clump”).

Words formed from dot

Phrases with dot

59 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with dot

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dot

What does dot mean?
Dot means a small, round spot.
What is dot in Gujarati?
Dot in Gujarati is ડોટ. See Dot meaning in Gujarati.
What part of speech is dot?
Dot can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce dot?
Dot is pronounced /dɒt/ (UK).
What is the plural of dot?
The plural of dot is dots.

Words near dot in the dictionary

  1. Doswell
  2. doswellid
  3. doswellids
  4. doswelliid
  5. doswelliids
  6. dot
  7. dot and carry
  8. dot ball
  9. dot balls
  10. dot blot
  11. dot blots

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dot (page history and authors); DOT (page history and authors); DoT (page history and authors); Dot (page history and authors); dot (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dot (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dot (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-dot.ogg, en-au-dot.ogg.

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