Spotty

adj, noun

adj, noun ·2 syllables ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A common New Zealand fish, Notolabrus celidotus

    "I went fishing today and all I caught were spotties."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Having spots; spotted.
  2. 2
    Occurring in non-contiguous positions or locations.

    "Mobile phone reception in this area tends to be rather spotty."

  3. 3
    Of inconsistent quality.

    "Many of the buyers had a spotty credit history."

Adjective
  1. 1
    lacking consistency wordnet
  2. 2
    having spots or patches (small areas of contrasting color or texture) wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
dottedspottedbadbespangledbespeckledblotched

Example

More examples

"Dalmatians are regarded as being highly spotty dogs."

Etymology

From Middle English spotty, equivalent to spot + -y.

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