blotch

What it means

1. An uneven patch of color or discoloration.

   1711, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator, London: J. & R. Tonson, 12th edition, Volume I, No. 16, p. 68, […] in healing those Blotches and Tumours which break out in the body […]

   3 more examples

   Since the day in which this reformation began, by how many strange and critical turns has it been perfected and handed down, if not, entirely without spot or wrinkle,—at least, without great blotches or marks of anility.

   1768, Laurence Sterne, Sermon VI, The Sermons of Mr. Yorick, volume 3, London: T. Becket & P.A. De Hondt, pages 182–183

   Snow lay on the croft and river-bank in undulations softer than the limbs of infancy; […] it clothed the rough turnip-field with whiteness, and made the sheep look like dark blotches;

   1860, George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Book II, Chapter 2

   1921, Wallace Stevens, Sur Ma Guzzla Gracile, Palace of the Babies, in Poetry, Volume 19, No. 1, The disbeliever walked the moonlit place, Outside the gates of hammered serafin, Observing the moon-blotches on the walls.

2. An irregularly shaped area.

   His shirt showed big blotches of moisture, and the sweat was rolling in clear drops along the creases in his brown neck.

   1923, Willa Cather, One of Ours, Book One, Chapter 5

   3 more examples

   At Coleman's Hill, the upper beds consist of yellowish, soft, gritty sandstone, containing some small calcareous fragments, a few pebbles of quartz, blotches of red shale, and fragments of sandstone with impressions of stems of plants.

   1839, The Silurian System

   Microscopic and sometimes macroscopic examination of the apparently healthy intervening tissue may reveal the fungus connecting the blotches of diseased tissue.

   1938, Henry Bake Steer, Stumpage Prices of Privately Owned Timber in the United States

   Evil places where the wind whistles and the dust grates, places that are blotches of shadow, blotches of rust, blotches of oil: innumerable blotches.

   2010, J.M.G. Le Clezio, The Book of Flights, →ISBN

3. figurativelyImperfection; blemish on one’s reputation, stain.

   1 more example

   1921, Warren G. Harding, Inaugural address, in Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States: from George Washington to Barack Obama, Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 1989, There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

In a sentence

1711, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator, London: J. & R. Tonson, 12th edition, Volume I, No. 16, p. 68, […] in healing those Blotches and Tumours which break out in the body […]

Where it comes from

Uncertain. Perhaps a blend of blot + botch.