Spot-clean

verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 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."

Example

More examples

"“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."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.