spotlight

1. 1.

   move into the foreground to make more visible or prominent

   “The introduction highlighted the speaker's distinguished career in linguistics”

   Synonymsforegroundhighlightplay up

   Broaderbring out
2. 2.

   illuminate with a spotlight, as in the theater

   Broaderlight

Other forms of spotlight

plural

spotlights·

past tense or participle

spotlit

present participle

spotlighting·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about spotlight

What does spotlight mean?

spotlight means "a focus of public attention". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in spotlight?

spotlight has 2 syllables: spot-light. The stress falls on "spot". In IPA it is /ˈspɑtˌlaɪt/.

What is another word for spotlight?

Close synonyms include limelight, glare, public eye, spot, foreground. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is spotlight a common word?

spotlight is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with spotlight?

27 words rhyme with spotlight. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.