blot out

present singular third person blots out · participle present blotting out · participle past blotted out · past blotted out

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blot, out.
2. transitiveTo obscure.

   The moon blotted out the sun and all was dark.

   3 more examples

   However, upon a ſtrict Review, I blotted out ſeveral Paſſages of leſs Moment which were in my firſt Copy, for fear of being cenſured as tedious and trifling, whereof Travellers are often, perhaps not without Juſtice, accuſed.

   1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “A Great Storm Described, the Long-Boat Sent to Fetch Water, the Author Goes with It to Discover the Country. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part II (A Voyage to Brobdingnag), page [176]

   The desert storm was riding in its strength; the travellers lay beneath the mastery of the fell simoom.[…]Roaring, leaping, pouncing, the tempest raged about the wanderers, drowning and blotting out their forms with sandy spume.

   1892, James Yoxall, chapter 5, in The Lonely Pyramid

   From Keighley onwards we had obviously returned to civilisation, for the surrounding country was now studded with the sodium street lights of suburbia and a thickening industrial haze was blotting out the moon.

   1960 January, G. Freeman Allen, “"Condor"—British Railways' fastest freight train”, in Trains Illustrated, page 48

3. transitiveTo make indecipherable; to obliterate.

   From the time he had left the house in Soho on the morning of the murder, he was simply blotted out; and gradually, as time drew on, Mr. Utterson began to recover from the hotness of his alarm, and to grow more at quiet with himself.

   1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Remarkable Incident of Dr. Lanyon”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 54

4. transitiveTo annihilate.

   And every living substance that I have made will I blot out from off the face of the earth.

   1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 7:4