My daughter has a shirt that is dotted. The dots vary in color and size. There are many of them. There is a pattern, but the dots are not equally spaced.
I say that it’s not polka dots, but I don’t have a term to say what it is. My wife disagrees.
I agree with you that polka dots are evenly spaced and evenly sized.
Your daughter’s shirt might have circus dots.
I had never heard of that requirement for polka dots. I’m not saying you’re wrong, only that I have never heard it before.
Well, the dictionary doesn’t specify evenly spaced and evenly sized.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/polka-dot?jss=1
Wikipedia claims otherwise, but that’s not considered a reliable source.
It’s just as reliable as “the dictionary”. Definitions of words are pretty arbitrary.
My home Webster’s New World Dictionary from 2006 and from 2008 have the identical definition. A user-defined publicly changeable resource is better than a reference book? I know that Wikipedia is not considered a reliable resource for High School research projects(much to teenage boy’s chagrin).
The definition is ‘a dot or round spot (printed, woven, or embroidered) repeated to form a pattern on a textile fabric.’ ‘Forming a pattern’ at least implies that they are regularly-distributed, as opposed to the random distribution of circus dots.
Also, from Mirriam-Webster (emphasis mine):
‘A dot’, as opposed to ‘dots’, may be construed to mean dots of equal size.
I’ve never known polka dots to have a requirement of equal size, either.
But the OP does say they form a pattern.
So the question is does “regularly distributed” mean “evenly distributed” or “forming a pattern”?
I’d be very surprised if there’s any arrangement of dots such that most people agree that they don’t form a pattern.
I always thought, for some reason, that small, evenly-distributed patterned dots were called Swiss dots, but from what I can find online, it looks like the dot being slightly raised (or flocked) may be a requirement as well.
Not exactly sure what you mean, but perhaps “repeating pattern” would be better? Most of the “circus dots” linked to earlier in this thread are what I would call not forming a pattern.
When I say forming a pattern, I mean that somewhere in the textile factory the dots repeat their arrangement. They are not randomly distributed.
Here’s a dress that is roughly similar. The dots on the original shirt in question were significantly smaller, and in a different color family; also, there was less space between them.
But if you call the one in the link polka dot, then I guess the original is polka dot too.
The Master already spoke on this: What’s the origin of the term “polka dots”? - The Straight Dope
They should suggest a pattern, so it seems Mrs. JerseyFrank is right.
Quick! Someone delete this thread before she sees it!
Luckily, it wasn’t a big trivial argument. She just referred to it as “the polka dot shirt” and I asked if it were really polka dots, since the image that I have of polka dots are big, single-color, equally-sized, evenly-spaced dots. I suggested it was “stepple” but quickly backtracked on that one as I think that’s something else entirely.
I still say those are ‘circus dots’ and not polka dots.
What I mean is that, if you show people a bunch of dots on a piece of paper and ask what the pattern is, almost no one will ever say that there is no pattern, even if the dots are laid out at random.
I agree. And the dress in the Amazon link featured circus dots, though the fact that the manufacturer called them polka dots indicates that there’s enough variance in usage that Frank and Mrs. Frank can end the argument with a mutually unsatisfying “we’re both sort of right.”
Ah, you’re speaking of the human tendency to see patterns where there are none (clouds, random numbers, etc.) This is not what I was thinking of, but rather repeating patterns that you might see commonly in textile manufacturing.
Slight hijack: How did they come to be called polka dots? Polka is a dance or particular style of music.