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beauty spot

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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WOTD – 26 February 2023

Etymology

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The South Korean rapper and singer Chaeyoung (Son Chae-young) has a beauty spot (sense 1.1) on the left side of her chin beneath her lips in the form of a mole.
Portrait einer Dame mit Maske (Portrait of a Woman with a Mask, 19th century), an anonymous painting depicting a woman with a prominent beauty spot (sense 1.2) on the right side of her face.

From beauty (noun) +‎ spot (noun). Some uses of sense 1 (“thing which is beautiful”) are figurative uses of sense 1.2 (“patch on the face to heighten beauty”).[1]

Pronunciation

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Noun

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beauty spot (plural beauty spots)

  2. (archaic) A thing (especially an aspect of something) which is beautiful.
    2. A natural mark on a person's skin, especially a freckle or mole on a woman's face.
      Synonym: beauty mark
    4. (cosmetics, historical) A patch or spot drawn or placed on the face in order to heighten beauty.
      Synonyms: beauty mark, mouche
      • 1701, Nehemiah Grew, “Of the Ends of Providence. And First, in this Life.”, in Cosmologia Sacra: Or A Discourse of the Universe as It is the Creature and Kingdom of God. […], London: […] W[illiam] Rogers, S[amuel] Smith, and B[enjamin] Walford: […], →OCLC, 3rd book, paragraph 49, page 102:
        The Deformity, and Filthyneſs of Svvine, make them the Beauty-ſpot of the Animal Creation, and the Emblem of all Vice.
        Used figuratively to refer to a thing which enhances the attractiveness of something else.
    5. (ornithology, archaic) Synonym of speculum (“a bright, lustrous patch of colour found on the wings of ducks and some other birds, usually situated on the distal portions of the secondary quills, and much more brilliant in the adult male than in the female”)
  3. (chiefly British) A place noted for its beauty, especially its natural scenery.
    • [1879], Christina G[eorgina] Rossetti, “Mountains and Hills”, in Seek and Find: A Double Series of Short Studies of the Benedicte. […], London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge […]; New York, N.Y.: Pott, Young, & Co., →OCLC, 1st series (Creation), page 91:
      Moreover they [mountains] bestow necessaries not in mere naked sufficiency, but in forms which make hill-streams and waterfalls rank among the beauty-spots of this beautiful world: […]
    • 1960 March, J. P. Wilson, E. N. C. Haywood, “The Route through the Peak – Derby to Manchester: Part One”, in Trains Illustrated, London: Ian Allan Publishing, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 155:
      The building of the railway in this notable beauty spot roused the great Victorian writer John Ruskin to fury.

Translations

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References

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  1. ^ “beauty spot, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2021; “beauty spot, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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