different between speck vs blemish

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sp?k/
• Homophone: spec
• Rhymes: -?k

Etymology 1

From Middle English spekke, from Old English specca (“small spot, stain”). Cognate with Low German spaken (“to spot with wet”).

Noun

speck (plural specks)

1. A tiny spot, especially of dirt etc.
2. A very small thing; a particle; a whit.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:modicum

   • a. 1864, Walter Savage Landor, quoted in 1971, Ernest Dilworth, Walter Savage Landor, Twayne Publishers, page 88,

     Onward, and many bright specks bubble up along the blue Aegean; islands, every one of which, if the songs and stories of the pilots are true, is the monument of a greater man than I am.
3. (zoology) A small etheostomoid fish, Etheostoma stigmaeum, common in the eastern United States.

Translations

Verb

speck (third-person singular simple present specks, present participle specking, simple past and past participle specked)

1. (transitive) To mark with specks; to speckle.

   paper specked by impurities in the water used in its manufacture

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1991, Stephen Orgel, Jonathan Goldberg (editors), The Major Works, 2003, paperback, page 534,

     Each flower of slender stalk, whose head though gay / Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold, / Hung drooping unsustained,

Etymology 2

From earlier specke, spycke (probably reinforced by Dutch spek, German Speck), from Middle English spik, spyk, spike, spich, from Old English spic (“bacon; lard; fat”), from Proto-Germanic *spikk?, *spik? (“bacon”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Späk, Dutch spek, German Speck, Icelandic spik.

Noun

speck (uncountable)

1. Fat; lard; fat meat.
2. (uncountable) A juniper-flavoured ham originally from Tyrol.
3. The blubber of whales or other marine mammals.
4. The fat of the hippopotamus.

Translations

Anagrams

• pecks

Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from German Speck, from Middle High German spec, from Old High German spek, from Proto-Germanic *spik? (“bacon”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?sp?k/
• Hyphenation: spèck

Noun

speck m (invariable)

1. speck (type of ham)

   Hypernym: salume

Further reading

• Speck Alto Adige on the Italian Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^it

References

• speck in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

English

Etymology

From Middle English blemisshen, blemissen, from Old French blemiss-, stem of Old French blemir, blesmir (“make pale, injure, wound, bruise”) (French blêmir), from Old Frankish *blesmjan, *blasmijan (“to make pale”), from Old Frankish *blasmi (“pale”), from Proto-Germanic *blasaz (“white, pale”), from Proto-Indo-European *b?el- (“to shine”). Cognate with Dutch bles (“white spot”), German blass (“pale”), Old English ?blered (“bare, uncovered, bald, shaven”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?bl?m??/
• Hyphenation: blem?ish

Noun

blemish (plural blemishes)

1. A small flaw which spoils the appearance of something, a stain, a spot.
   • 1769, Oxford Standard Text, King James Bible, Leviticus, 22, xix,

     Ye shall offer at your own will a male without blemish, of the beeves, of the sheep, or of the goats.

   • 1997, Jean Soler, 5: The Semiotics of Food in the Bible, Carole Counihan, Penny Van Esterik (editors), Food and Culture: A Reader, page 61,

     Any foot shape deviating from this model is conceived as a blemish, and the animal is unclean.

   • 2003, A. K. Forrest, Chapter 6: Surface Defect Detection on Ceramics, Mark Graves, Bruce Batchelor (editors), Machine Vision for the Inspection of Natural Products, page 193,

     There are a very large number of types of blemish and the smallest blemish visible to a human can be surprisingly small, for example less than 10?m deep, which may be on the surface of a heavily embossed tile.
2. A moral defect; a character flaw.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:defect

Related terms

• blemished (adjective)
• blemishless
• blemishment

Translations

Verb

blemish (third-person singular simple present blemishes, present participle blemishing, simple past and past participle blemished)

1. To spoil the appearance of.
   • 2009, Michael A. Kirkman, Chapter 2: Global Markets fo Processed Potato Products, Jaspreet Singh, Lovedeep Kaur (editors), Advances in Potato Chemistry and Technology, page 40,

     Generally, varieties in current use for processing are resilient, if not wholly resistant to blemishing diseases and disorders.

   • 2011, Rob Imrie, Emma Street, Architectural Design and Regulation, unnumbered page,

     I mean it reaches a point of ridiculousness in some regards, and one?s seen actually many good schemes here in San Francisco, for example, that have been blemished by an overly strict adherence to codes.

2. To tarnish (reputation, character, etc.); to defame.
   • 1600, Francis Vere, Commentaries of the Divers Pieces of Service

     There had nothing passed betwixt us that might blemish reputation.

Translations