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speckless

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Etymology

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From speck +‎ -less.

Adjective

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speckless (comparative more speckless, superlative most speckless)

  1. spotless, perfectly clean
    • 1866, Wilkie Collins, Armadale[1]:
      Modest and tasteful poverty expressed itself in the speckless cleanliness and the modestly proportioned skirts of her light "print" gown, and in the scanty little mantilla of cheap black silk which she wore over it, edged with a simple frilling of the same material.
    • 1865, Thomas Carlyle, History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.)[2]:
      They did not walk in altogether speckless Sunday pumps, or much clear-starched into consciousness of the moral sublime; but in rugged practical boots, and by such roads as there were.
    • 1901, Hezekiah Butterworth, Little Sky-High[3]:
      It shed a kind of good influence through the house, to see the little fellow in his fine linens flitting around, so careful was he to keep all things in speckless order.
    • 1912, Gouverneur Morris, IT and Other Stories[4]:
      There was never a millionaire who had more speckless white suits than I had, though it's a matter almost of routine for officers to go dirty on anything but the swell liners.
    • 1922, Kirk Munroe, J. Finnemore, At War with Pontiac[5]:
      When the appointed time arrived and Majors Gladwyn and Rogers; Captains Dalzell, Grant, and Gray; Lieutenants Cuyler, Hay, and Brown, and half a dozen more, all in speckless uniforms, were assembled about the homely but well-laden mess-table, there entered still another at whom the newcomers gazed in surprise but without recognition.
  2. spotless; without blemish
    • 1919, George Herbert Fosdike Nichols (a.k.a. Quex), Pushed and the Return Push[6]:
      All the wood used was new and speckless, and smelt sweet and clean.
    • 1896, William Dean Howells, The Landlord at Lion's Head, Volume 1[7]:
      The noonday sunshine lay in a thin, silvery glister on the slopes of the mountain before them, and in the brilliant light the colossal forms of the Lion's Head were prismatically outlined against the speckless sky.

Derived terms

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