Word.ws English Dictionary

dot-connecting

dot-connecting noun: the act of connecting the dots.

Noun

dot-connecting (uncountable)

  1. The act of connecting the dots.
    • Because of the movie’s focus on the digging and dot-connecting that go into investigative reporting, it has invited comparisons to “All the President’s Men.”2015 November 4, Frank Bruni, “The Catholic Church’s Sins Are Ours”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 04 Nov 2015
    • Stefanski’s contract expired after this season, which led to some dot-connecting that Shurmur could make another run at the young coach that he worked with for two years in Minnesota.2019 January 25, Dan Duggan, “Giants notebook: Observations from the first few weeks of the team's offseason”, in The Athletic, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from...
    Synonyms:
    dot connection

Adjective

dot-connecting (not comparable)

  1. (attributive) Involving connecting the dots.
    • The Pentagon's infamous Total Information Awareness program, which came to light in 2002, was intended to scoop up information on citizens from a variety of sources – commercial purchase databases, government records – and mine it for suggestive terrorism connections. But to many Americans, this...2006 December 3, Clive Thompson, “Open-Source Spying”, in The New York Times Magazine, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 14 Jul 2022
    • Dot-connecting exercises have pegged New Orleans Saints wide receivers Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed to the Broncos.2025 November 3, Nick Kosmider, “Why I expect the Broncos to stand pat at the NFL trade deadline”, in The Athletic, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the...

Examples of dot-connecting in a sentence

  • But to many Americans, this sort of dot-connecting activity seemed like an outrageous violation of privacy, and soon after it was exposed, the program was killed.2006 December 3, Clive Thompson, “Open-Source Spying”, in The New York Times Magazine, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN...
  • This one often appears near the beginning of an exchange or an argument, and it heralds a big-picture, chin-stroking, dot-connecting answer.2026 January 1, Carlos Lozada, “The Two Questions I Wish We’d Stop Asking in 2026”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York...

Synonyms of dot-connecting

Origin of dot-connecting

From connect the dots.

Questions about dot-connecting

What does dot-connecting mean?
Dot-connecting means the act of connecting the dots.
How do you use dot-connecting in a sentence?
But to many Americans, this sort of dot-connecting activity seemed like an outrageous violation of privacy, and soon after it was exposed, the program was killed.
What part of speech is dot-connecting?
Dot-connecting can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near dot-connecting in the dictionary

  1. dot-commiserate
  2. dot-commiserated
  3. dot-commiserates
  4. dot-commiserating
  5. dot-coms
  6. dot-connecting
  7. dot-connection
  8. dot-connector
  9. dot-connectors
  10. dot-dot-dot
  11. dot-dot-dots

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dot-connecting (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.

Last updated:

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