MOTES Synonyms: 99 Similar and Opposite Words

motes

noun

plural of mote

as in specks

a very small piece there's not a mote of dirt in that woman's house

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Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of motes Tiny bugs float in the sun like dust motes, and there are graceful flies large enough to require a runway landing. — John Metcalfe, Mercury News, 4 May 2026 Sunbeams through the windows illuminate floating dust motes—and, imperceptibly, microdroplets of mucus carrying the measles virus, expelled from an infected but asymptomatic child who is hopping and laughing among the others. — Elizabeth Bruenig, The Atlantic, 12 Feb. 2026 Easily swept up by wind and carried long distances by water, these tiny motes are also exceedingly difficult to detect and almost impossible to remove from the environment. — K. R. Callaway, Scientific American, 22 Jan. 2026 There’s a Gambit-adjacent one that has players depositing motes while killing other teams. — Paul Tassi, Forbes.com, 30 Aug. 2025 The sensors’ small size allows seamless integration into almost any environment, while the wireless, modular design lets motes be added or removed as needed depending on the application. — Georgina Jedikovska, Interesting Engineering, 6 Aug. 2025 Powering and recording signals from multiple motes will require new techniques and better signal processing. — Eliza Strickland, IEEE Spectrum, 21 Oct. 2016

Recent Examples of Synonyms for motes

Noun

Calcium shows up as bright white specks on the coronary artery images.

— Hanna Wickes, Kansas City Star, 20 Aug. 2026
Pulse a few times, until crumbs range in size from specks to peas.

— Leah Eskin, Midwest Living, 14 Aug. 2026

Definition of specks

Noun

Neutrinos bump into other particles only rarely, so scientists build large detectors to improve their odds of catching collisions.

— Arkansas Online, Arkansas Online, 7 Oct. 2026
Relativistic means travelling at speeds near that of light, with the blazar's central supermassive black hole as the engine that accelerated these particles.

— Robert Lea, Space.com, 7 Oct. 2026

Definition of particles

Noun

The oversized jacket featured a furry white base adorned with flecks of silver, which beautifully mirrored the sumptuous coats on the runway.

— Chanel Vargas, InStyle, 25 Sep. 2026
Add the torn basil and process just until incorporated -- there will be flecks of green in the mixture.

— ABC News, ABC News, 19 Sep. 2026

Definition of flecks

Noun

And Widow’s Bay was, of course, very successful at alternating between scary and funny bits.

— Daniel Fienberg, HollywoodReporter, 8 Oct. 2026
In addition, they’re used in experiments searching for dark matter and in systems that read information from superconducting quantum bits, or qubits.

— Georgina Jedikovska, Interesting Engineering, 7 Oct. 2026

Definition of bits

Noun

This internal pressure eventually forces the microstructure to recrystallize on its own, spawning fresh, dramatically finer grains from within.

— Aman Tripathi, Interesting Engineering, 1 Oct. 2026
Its factories receive small grains of refined metal from recyclers in Europe and Asia, sourced from items ranging from medical equipment to old cutlery, said Pandora’s chief sustainability officer Mads Twomey-Madsen.

— Aniruddha Ghosal, Chicago Tribune, 1 Oct. 2026

Definition of grains

Noun

There were taro patches and gardens planted with banana, sweet potato, sugar cane, noni, and more.

— Condé Nast, Condé Nast Traveler, 6 Oct. 2026
The release notes mention patches for a Face ID bug and camera-zooming issues on iPhone 18 Pro models, as well as a fix for an unresponsive screen issue.

— Jibin Joseph, PC Magazine, 2 Oct. 2026

Definition of patches

Noun

The 2026 Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to Henri Kagan of the Universite Paris-Sud, in France, and Kenso Soai of the Tokyo University of Science, in Japan, for their work exploring the fundamental geometry of molecules.

— Adam Kovac, Scientific American, 7 Oct. 2026
At the center of the MOF are positively charged metal ions connected by organic linker molecules.

— Ameya Paleja, Interesting Engineering, 5 Oct. 2026

Definition of molecules

Noun

Blanding hops in and out of the truck, grabbing buckets of food scraps from porches and restaurants, piling those scraps into bins in the truck bed and driving them to a composting site.

— ABC News, ABC News, 5 Oct. 2026
But his script, co-written with regular collaborator Jack Coulter, is less impressive, welding together story scraps from other, better films to rather turbid, uninvolving effect.

— Guy Lodge, Variety, 3 Oct. 2026

Definition of scraps

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motels

motes

motet

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“Motes.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/motes. Accessed 9 Oct. 2026.

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Synonyms of motes

noun

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