Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb In a spotty manner.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

spotty +‎ -ly

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Examples

  • Humanitarian intervention: The trend in international law, although spottily followed in practice, is for intervention on behalf of victims of potential genocide and gross human rights abuses.

    Allan Gerson: Humanitarian Intervention or Regime Change in Libya: International Law as a Compass Allan Gerson 2011

  • Flannery grew up — in Savannah and in Atlanta and, from 1938, in the Cline mansion in Milledgeville — with black servants floating around and a sense of herself as part of the genteel, bigoted, spottily educated stratum of landed whites.

    Touched by Evil Joseph O'Neil 2009

  • Humanitarian intervention: The trend in international law, although spottily followed in practice, is for intervention on behalf of victims of potential genocide and gross human rights abuses.

    Allan Gerson: Humanitarian Intervention or Regime Change in Libya: International Law as a Compass Allan Gerson 2011

  • Flannery grew up — in Savannah and in Atlanta and, from 1938, in the Cline mansion in Milledgeville — with black servants floating around and a sense of herself as part of the genteel, bigoted, spottily educated stratum of landed whites.

    Touched by Evil Joseph O'Neil 2009

  • Humanitarian intervention: The trend in international law, although spottily followed in practice, is for intervention on behalf of victims of potential genocide and gross human rights abuses.

    Allan Gerson: Humanitarian Intervention or Regime Change in Libya: International Law as a Compass Allan Gerson 2011

  • The code has been "spottily enforced" but the Taliban hasn't stopped there.

    Michael Giltz: Extreme Taliban Makeover: The Secret Memo 2010

  • Early in the construction phase it had purchased goggles, safety belts, and some thirteen thousand safety helmets for distribution to all workers the project acquired the reputation, inaccurately, as the first construction site to use hardhats but the mandate to wear them was only spottily enforced.

    Colossus Michael Hiltzik 2010

  • Early in the construction phase it had purchased goggles, safety belts, and some thirteen thousand safety helmets for distribution to all workers the project acquired the reputation, inaccurately, as the first construction site to use hardhats but the mandate to wear them was only spottily enforced.

    Colossus Michael Hiltzik 2010

  •  He could feel the flaccid skin warm, but only spottily.

    Old Egg Mark Cecil Stevens 2010

  • The code has been \ "spottily enforced\" but the Taliban hasn\'t stopped there.

    Michael Giltz: Extreme Taliban Makeover: The Secret Memo 2010

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