German

Noun

Speck m ‎(genitive Specks or Speckes, plural Specke)

1. bacon
2. adipose tissue, fat

Declension

Derived terms

• speckig
• abspecken
• Kummerspeck

Luxembourgish

Etymology

From Old High German spek, from Proto-Germanic *spiką. Cognate with German Speck, Dutch spek, English speck, Icelandic spik.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʃpæk/

Noun

Speck m ‎(plural Specken)

1. bacon

English

Noun

speck ‎(plural specks)

1. (countable) A tiny spot, especially of dirt etc.

   a tiny speck of soot‎

   • 2013 July 20, “Out of the gloom”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845:

     [Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian villages is long overdue. When the national grid suffers its next huge outage, as it did in July 2012 when hundreds of millions were left in the dark, look for specks of light in the villages.

2. A very small thing; a particle; a whit.

   He has not a speck of money.‎

   • a. 1864, Walter Savage Landor, quoted in 1971, Ernest Dilworth, Walter Savage Landor, Twayne Publishers, page 88,

     Onward, and many bright specks bubble up along the blue Aegean; islands, every one of which, if the songs and stories of the pilots are true, is the monument of a greater man than I am.

3. A small etheostomoid fish, Etheostoma (Doration) stigmaeum, common in the eastern United States.

Synonyms

• (small thing): See also Wikisaurus:modicum.

Translations

Verb

speck ‎(third-person singular simple present specks, present participle specking, simple past and past participle specked)

1. (transitive) To mark with specks; to speckle.

   paper specked by impurities in the water used in its manufacture

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1991, Stephen Orgel, ‎Jonathan Goldberg (editors), The Major Works, 2003, paperback, page 534,

     Each flower of slender stalk, whose head though gay / Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold, / Hung drooping unsustained,

Etymology 2

From earlier specke, spycke (probably reinforced by Dutch spek, German Speck), from Middle English spik, spyk, spike, spich, from Old English spic ‎(“bacon; lard; fat”), from Proto-Germanic *spikką, *spiką ‎(“bacon”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Späk, Dutch spek, German Speck, Icelandic spik.

Noun

speck ‎(uncountable)

1. Fat; lard; fat meat.
2. (uncountable) A juniper-flavoured ham originally from Tyrol.
3. The blubber of whales or other marine mammals.
4. The fat of the hippopotamus.

Anagrams

• pecks

Italian

Noun

speck m ‎(invariable)

1. speck (type of ham)