From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishmotemote /məʊt $ moʊt/ noun [countable] old-fashionedDHPIECE a very small piece of dust
Examples from the Corpus
mote• She screamed, half terrified, half ecstatic, feeling like a mote of dust tossed on an endless ocean.• It is hardly necessary to dignify that vile canard by saying there is not a mote of truth to it.• Booth agreed that there was a mote in the eye of ministerial beholders preventing them reading the timetable properly.• Beauty was communication, each mote of light shaded with one nuance of meaning and each meaning had a colour.• Shame filled the air like motes of dust.• But this has led anthropologists to exaggerate the motes of racial difference and to ignore the beams of similarity.• No matter how small, these motes of humanity following our orders are not to be sacrificed lightly.• I completed tidying the loft, sneezing a few times as the golden space filled with motes of shining dust.Origin mote Old English mot 