Word.ws English Dictionary

spot-cleaning

spot-cleaning is the present participle and gerund of spot-clean.

Meaning of spot-clean

Verb

spot-clean (third-person singular simple present spot-cleans, present participle spot-cleaning, simple past and past participle spot-cleaned)

  1. To clean only those parts that are soiled, rather than cleaning the entire thing, area, etc.
    • “You can ruin the cloth if you try to spot-clean it,” warns Susan Fritz, co-owner of Denver Doll Hospital, a doll-cleaning and restoration business.1999, Jeff Bredenberg, Clean It Fast, Clean It Right, page 151

Questions about spot-cleaning

What is spot-cleaning the present participle and gerund of?
Spot-cleaning is the present participle and gerund of spot-clean.

Words near spot-cleaning in the dictionary

  1. spot-checked
  2. spot-checking
  3. spot-checks
  4. spot-clean
  5. spot-cleaned
  6. spot-cleaning
  7. spot-cleans
  8. spot-kick
  9. spot-kicks
  10. spot-legged poison frog
  11. spot-legged poison frogs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spot-cleaning (page history and authors); spot-clean (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: “spot-cleaning.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spot-cleaning. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.