Word.ws English Dictionary

speckle

/ˈspɛkəl/

speckle noun: a small spot or speck on the skin, plumage or foliage.

Noun

speckle (countable and uncountable, plural speckles)

  1. A small spot or speck on the skin, plumage or foliage.
  2. The random distribution of light when it is scattered by a rough surface.
  3. (Scotland) Kind; sort.
  4. A cluster of interchromatin granules in a nucleus.
    Synonyms:
    splicing speckle

Verb

speckle (third-person singular simple present speckles, present participle speckling, simple past and past participle speckled)

  1. To mark with speckles.

Examples of speckle in a sentence

  • The bird's eggs were speckled as camouflage.
  • Long believed to be extinct, the purple-bellied speckled turtle was sighted for the first time in living memory in a remote pasture near Chicago.
  • The male cuckoo is dark in colour, while its female is speckled (called the Gomara Koha).

All 17 example sentences with speckle

Synonyms of speckle

  • splicing speckle

Forms of speckle

Noun
pluralspeckles
Verb
third-person singular presentspeckles
present participlespeckling
past participlespeckled
pastspeckled

Origin of speckle

The noun is from Middle Dutch spekkel; the verb was later coined from the noun, in the late 16th century.

Words formed from speckle

Words that rhyme with speckle

Questions about speckle

What does speckle mean?
Speckle means a small spot or speck on the skin, plumage or foliage.
What part of speech is speckle?
Speckle can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce speckle?
Speckle is pronounced /ˈspɛkəl/.
What is the plural of speckle?
The plural of speckle is speckles.

Words near speckle in the dictionary

  1. speckilating
  2. speckilation
  3. speckilations
  4. speckiness
  5. specking
  6. speckle
  7. speckle imaging
  8. speckle-fronted weaver
  9. speckle-fronted weavers
  10. specklebellies
  11. specklebelly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: speckle (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-speckle.wav.

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