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On the spot   /ɑn ðə spɑt/   Listen
noun
Spot  n.  
1.
A mark on a substance or body made by foreign matter; a blot; a place discolored. "Out, damned spot! Out, I say!"
2.
A stain on character or reputation; something that soils purity; disgrace; reproach; fault; blemish. "Yet Chloe, sure, was formed without a spot."
3.
A small part of a different color from the main part, or from the ground upon which it is; as, the spots of a leopard; the spots on a playing card.
4.
A small extent of space; a place; any particular place. "Fixed to one spot." "That spot to which I point is Paradise." ""A jolly place," said he, "in times of old! But something ails it now: the spot is cursed.""
5.
(Zool.) A variety of the common domestic pigeon, so called from a spot on its head just above its beak.
6.
(Zool.)
(a)
A sciaenoid food fish (Liostomus xanthurus) of the Atlantic coast of the United States. It has a black spot behind the shoulders and fifteen oblique dark bars on the sides. Called also goody, Lafayette, masooka, and old wife.
(b)
The southern redfish, or red horse, which has a spot on each side at the base of the tail. See Redfish.
7.
pl. Commodities, as merchandise and cotton, sold for immediate delivery. (Broker's Cant)
Crescent spot (Zool.), any butterfly of the family Melitaeidae having crescent-shaped white spots along the margins of the red or brown wings.
Spot lens (Microscopy), a condensing lens in which the light is confined to an annular pencil by means of a small, round diaphragm (the spot), and used in dark-field illumination; called also spotted lens.
Spot rump (Zool.), the Hudsonian godwit (Limosa haemastica).
Spots on the sun. (Astron.) See Sun spot, ander Sun.
On the spot, or Upon the spot, immediately; before moving; without changing place; as, he made his decision on the spot. "It was determined upon the spot."
Synonyms: Stain; flaw; speck; blot; disgrace; reproach; fault; blemish; place; site; locality.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"On the spot" Quotes from Famous Books



... as his fourth wife. But with poor, fat, straw-colored Anne on one side, and black-and-sallow, foreign-looking, man-voiced Mary on the other, the thoroughly English Princess Elizabeth took London by storm on the spot. Tall and majestic, she was a magnificent example of the finest Anglo-Norman type. Always 'the glass of fashion' and then the very 'mould of form' her splendid figure looked equally well on horseback or on foot. A little full in the eye, ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... brother, and sister, all threshing out their corn together on the mud floor of their barn; but much more so when you see them, in the corn-field itself, collect the sheaves into one place, and treading down the earth into a solid floor, there, in the face of heaven and fanned by its winds, thresh out on the spot the corn which has been cut. This we saw continually going forward on the steep slopes of the Odenwald, ten or a dozen men and women all threshing together. A whole field is thus soon threshed, the corn being beaten out much more easily while the ear is ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... common custom, alluded to by White of Selborne, was to fix it bottom upwards, and fill it with strong liquor. At Checkendon, in Oxfordshire, this was attended with fatal results. There is a tradition that one of the ringers helped himself so freely from the extemporised ale cask that he died on the spot, and was buried underneath the tower. Bells were still sometimes rung to dissipate thunderstorms, and perhaps to drive away contagion, under the notion that their vibrations purified the air. They were often rung on other occasions when they ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... naughty spot on it," answered mamma, "I heard it call auntie a name just now, and I wanted to tell you if I ever heard it call any one that again, I should put something on the spot to ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various

... Plunkett will see if you get the better of him a second time. We'll let the sheriff settle this matter, right on the spot." ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon


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