SMEAR • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Smear

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/smɪr/ Listen

noun

Smear n.

1.

A fat, oily substance; oinment.

2.

Hence, a spot made by, or as by, an unctuous or adhesive substance; a blot or blotch; a daub; a stain. "Slow broke the morn, All damp and rolling vapor, with no sun, But in its place a moving smear of light."

verb

Smear v. t. (past & past part. smeared; pres. part. smearing)

1.

To overspread with anything unctuous, viscous, or adhesive; to daub; as, to smear anything with oil. "Smear the sleepy grooms with blood."

2.

To soil in any way; to contaminate; to pollute; to stain morally; as, to be smeared with infamy.

3.

To smudge, blur, or render indistinct (writing, pictures, etc.).

4.

To vilify (a person); to damage (a person's reputation), especially falsely or by unfair innuendo, and with malicious intent.

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Etymology of 'Smear'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Smear" Quotes from Famous Books

... the trees, the low red roof of a house detached itself. By this time the sun was sinking in a smear of red across a delicately tinted sky. Its dying rays held some glittering object high up on the side ...

— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... wild unrest. The cool, salt flavor of the air spoke of wild stretches of the North Atlantic where sea-fogs have touched the eerie loneliness of Greenland bergs and passed it on to the wind. In this ghostly dusk of driving mist the smear of the rain across the face is like a touch of phantom hands coming out of unfathomed spaces, gentle but uncanny. All the soft perfumes of wood and field seem beaten to the ground by this rain which brings with its salt tang faint breathings ...

— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... flowers surrounds the head, which is usually adorned by a large daub of arnatto on the hair above the brow; while the forehead and cheeks are painted in various patterns with the same vermilion colour, which adds extreme ferocity to their appearance. Some of the men also smear their bodies with arnatto, as do the women. They are generally well-proportioned, and more elegant in figure than the other races. The women are noted for weaving excellent and durable hammocks of cotton—a plant which ...

— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... Pass'd on, and to the summit reaching, stood To view another gap, within the round Of Malebolge, other bootless pangs. Marvellous darkness shadow'd o'er the place. In the Venetian arsenal as boils Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear Their unbound vessels ... So not by force of fire but art divine Boiled here a glutinous thick mass, that round Limed ...

— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... Cattermole breakfast he waited long. She did not come. Another day—but why paint another day that was but a smear of flat dull slate? Yet another breakfast, and the lady of mystery came. Before he knew he was doing it he had bowed to her, a slight uneasy bend of his neck. She peered at him, unseeing, and sat down with her ...

— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

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