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Spot can be a verb or a noun.

spot used as a verb:

  1. To see, find; to pick out, notice, locate or identify.
    "Try to spot the differences between these two entries."
  2. To loan a small amount of money to someone.
    "I’ll spot you ten dollars for lunch."
  3. To stain; to leave a spot.
    "Hard water will spot if it is left on a surface."
  4. To remove, or attempt to remove, a stain.
    "I spotted the carpet where the child dropped spaghetti."
  5. To support or assist a maneuver, or to be prepared to assist if safety dictates.
    "I can’t do a back handspring unless somebody spots me."
  6. To keep the head and eyes pointing in a single direction while turning.
    "Most figure skaters do not spot their turns like dancers do."

Verbs are action words and state of being words. Examples of action words are: ran, attacking, dreamed. Examples of "state of being" words are: is, was, be. Learn more →

spot used as a noun:

  1. A round or irregular patch on the surface of a thing having a different color, texture etc. and generally round in shape.
    "The leopard is noted for the spots of color in its fur."
  2. A stain or disfiguring mark.
    "I have tried everything, and I can’t get this spot out."
  3. A pimple, papule or pustule.
    "That morning, I saw that a spot had come up on my chin."
  4. A small, unspecified amount or quantity.
    "Would you like to come round on Sunday for a spot of lunch?"
  5. A bill of five-dollar or ten-dollar denomination in dollars.
    "Here's the twenty bucks I owe you, a ten spot and two five spots."
  6. A location or area.
    "I like to eat lunch in a pleasant spot outside."
  7. An official determination of placement.
    "The fans were very unhappy with the referee's spot of the ball."
  8. A bright lamp; a spotlight.
  9. A brief advertisement or program segment on television.
    "Did you see the spot on the news about the shoelace factory?"
  10. Difficult situation; predicament
    "She was in a real spot when she ran into her separated husband while on a date."
  11. One who spots (supports or assists a maneuver, or is prepared to assist if safety dictates); a spotter

Nouns are naming words. They are used to represent a person (soldier, Jamie), place (Germany, beach), thing (telephone, mirror), quality (hardness, courage), or an action (a run, a punch). Learn more →

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What type of word is spot?

As detailed above, 'spot' can be a verb or a noun. Here are some examples of its usage:
  1. Verb usage: Try to spot the differences between these two entries.
  2. Verb usage: I’ll spot you ten dollars for lunch.
  3. Verb usage: Hard water will spot if it is left on a surface.
  4. Verb usage: I spotted the carpet where the child dropped spaghetti.
  5. Verb usage: I can’t do a back handspring unless somebody spots me.
  6. Verb usage: Most figure skaters do not spot their turns like dancers do.
  7. Noun usage: The leopard is noted for the spots of color in its fur.
  8. Noun usage: I have tried everything, and I can’t get this spot out.
  9. Noun usage: That morning, I saw that a spot had come up on my chin.
  10. Noun usage: I think she's got chicken pox; she's covered in spots.
  11. Noun usage: Would you like to come round on Sunday for a spot of lunch?
  12. Noun usage: Here's the twenty bucks I owe you, a ten spot and two five spots.
  13. Noun usage: I like to eat lunch in a pleasant spot outside.
  14. Noun usage: The fans were very unhappy with the referee's spot of the ball.
  15. Noun usage: Did you see the spot on the news about the shoelace factory?
  16. Noun usage: She was in a real spot when she ran into her separated husband while on a date.

Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of spot are used most commonly. I've got ideas about how to fix this but will need to find a source of "sense" frequencies. Hopefully there's enough info above to help you understand the part of speech of spot, and guess at its most common usage.

Word Type

For those interested in a little info about this site: it's a side project that I developed while working on Describing Words and Related Words. Both of those projects are based around words, but have much grander goals. I had an idea for a website that simply explains the word types of the words that you search for - just like a dictionary, but focussed on the part of speech of the words. And since I already had a lot of the infrastructure in place from the other two sites, I figured it wouldn't be too much more work to get this up and running.

The dictionary is based on the amazing Wiktionary project by wikimedia. I initially started with WordNet, but then realised that it was missing many types of words/lemma (determiners, pronouns, abbreviations, and many more). This caused me to investigate the 1913 edition of Websters Dictionary - which is now in the public domain. However, after a day's work wrangling it into a database I realised that there were far too many errors (especially with the part-of-speech tagging) for it to be viable for Word Type.

Finally, I went back to Wiktionary - which I already knew about, but had been avoiding because it's not properly structured for parsing. That's when I stumbled across the UBY project - an amazing project which needs more recognition. The researchers have parsed the whole of Wiktionary and other sources, and compiled everything into a single unified resource. I simply extracted the Wiktionary entries and threw them into this interface! So it took a little more work than expected, but I'm happy I kept at it after the first couple of blunders.

Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: the UBY project (mentioned above), @mongodb and express.js.

Currently, this is based on a version of wiktionary which is a few years old. I plan to update it to a newer version soon and that update should bring in a bunch of new word senses for many words (or more accurately, lemma).

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