ASPERSE • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Asperse

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verb

Asperse v. t. (past & past part. aspersed; pres. part. aspersing)

To sprinkle, as water or dust, upon anybody or anything, or to besprinkle any one with a liquid or with dust.

To bespatter with foul reports or false and injurious charges; to tarnish in point of reputation or good name; to slander or calumniate; as, to asperse a poet or his writings; to asperse a man's character. "With blackest crimes aspersed."

Synonyms: To slander; defame; detract from; calumniate; vilify. To Asperse, Defame, Slander, Calumniate. These words have in common the idea of falsely assailing the character of another. To asperse is figuratively to cast upon a character hitherto unsullied the imputation of blemishes or faults which render it offensive or loathsome. To defame is to detract from a man's honor and reputation by charges calculated to load him with infamy. Slander (etymologically the same as scandal) and calumniate, from the Latin, have in common the sense of circulating reports to a man's injury from unworthy or malicious motives. Men asperse their neighbors by malignant insinuations; they defame by advancing charges to blacken or sully their fair fame; they slander or calumniate by spreading injurious reports which are false, or by magnifying slight faults into serious errors or crimes.

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Etymology of 'Asperse'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Asperse" Quotes from Famous Books

... you have seen the audacious insolence, the tyrannical pride, with which he dares to treat this order. You have seen the recorded minute which he has dared to send to the Court of Directors; and in this you see, that, when he cannot directly asperse a man's conduct, and has nothing to say against it, he maliciously, I should perhaps rather say enviously, insinuates that he had unjustly made his fortune. "You are," says he, "to judge from the independence of his manner and style, whether he could or no have got that without some unjust means." ...

— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

Words linked to "Asperse" : badmouth, sully, assassinate, malign, accuse, charge, denigrate, calumniate, defame, traduce, slander, aspersion, smirch, besmirch, drag through the mud