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Smear   /smɪr/   Listen
Smear

verb
(past & past part. smeared; pres. part. smearing)
1.
Stain by smearing or daubing with a dirty substance.
2.
Make a smudge on; soil by smudging.  Synonyms: blur, smudge, smutch.
3.
Cover (a surface) by smearing (a substance) over it.  Synonym: daub.  "Daub the ceiling with plaster"
4.
Charge falsely or with malicious intent; attack the good name and reputation of someone.  Synonyms: asperse, besmirch, calumniate, defame, denigrate, slander, smirch, sully.  "The article in the paper sullied my reputation"



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"Smear" Quotes from Famous Books



... I'll call her to the stand and cinch the case! She won't even know who called her! Perhaps I can arrange with Judge Babson to call her on some other point and then pretend to sort of stumble onto the fact of the confession and examine her himself. That would let us out. I can smear it over somehow." ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... of the pavilion and whispering, with a Reese-like smirk, that her dress gaped behind and that there was a stain on the flounce. Rilla rushed miserably to the room in the lighthouse which was fitted up for a temporary ladies' dressing-room, and discovered that the stain was merely a tiny grass smear and that the gap was equally tiny where a hook had pulled loose. Irene Howard fastened it up for her and gave her some over-sweet, condescending compliments. Rilla felt flattered by Irene's condescension. She was an Upper Glen ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... came out of the pressroom with a bundle of papers under his arm, the roar of the presses providing a background for his chant. "Extra! Read All About It! Spindrifters Smear Smugglers! Seaman Shows Shootin' Savvy! Simple Sap Scampers, Saves Skin! ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine

... shouts; But the temple was full "inside and out," And a buzz kept buzzing all round about Like bees when the day is sunny— A buzz universal that interfered With the right that ought to have been revered, As if the couple already were smear'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... it all out of him like other women do I could often have written out a fine cheque for myself and write his name on it for a couple of pounds a few times he forgot to lock it up besides he wont spend it Ill let him do it off on me behind provided he doesnt smear all my good drawers O I suppose that cant be helped Ill do the indifferent l or 2 questions Ill know by the answers when hes like that he cant keep a thing back I know every turn in him Ill tighten my bottom well and let out a few smutty words ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... her testimony, the Jews are in the habit of using Christian blood to smear the eyes of their new-born babies, since "the Jews are always born blind," also to mix it with the flour in preparing the unleavened ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... Darkening the eyelashes and eyebrows. Use Leichner's No. 60 black mascaro; dark brown for light blondes. The lower lashes are better left without the treatment, since they are almost certain to smear the face if treated, and the shadow you have already placed there takes care of the lower lashes all that is necessary. Apply the mascaro to the upper lashes with the brush that comes with the mascaro, or any fine brush will do. Start a delicate line on the edge of the eyelid at the outer corner ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... hard-boiled eggs, cut them in halves while hot, after removing the shells, and press each half a little way into the puree, so that the yellow yolk will be shown surrounded by the white ring. Be very careful not to smear the ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... "They smear every thing about the entrance to the hive with a gum which is found between the cells which the Greeks call [Greek: erithakae]. They live under the discipline of an army, taking turns in resting and all doing their equal share of work, and they send out colonies and ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... when sweat Unpurged cleaves to them after shearing done, And rough thorns rend their bodies. Hence it is Shepherds their whole flock steep in running streams, While, plunged beneath the flood, with drenched fell, The ram, launched free, goes drifting down the tide. Else, having shorn, they smear their bodies o'er With acrid oil-lees, and mix silver-scum And native sulphur and Idaean pitch, Wax mollified with ointment, and therewith Sea-leek, strong hellebores, bitumen black. Yet ne'er doth kindlier fortune crown his toil, Than if with ...
— The Georgics • Virgil

... letter to Joe. I think it must have been a full year after our hunt upon the marshes, for it was a long time after, and it was winter and a hard frost. With an alphabet on the hearth at my feet for reference, I contrived in an hour or two to print and smear this epistle:— ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... was left to fight her battle alone. She did not weep or wail when Wassef's body was brought home and the moghassil and hanouti came to do their offices. She did not smear her hair with mud, nor was she moved by the wailing of the mourning women nor the chanters of the Koran. She only said to Fatima when all was over: "It is well; he is gone from my woe to the mercy of God! Praise be to God!" And she held her head high in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... below the band. This should be attended to every day during the short season of their ascent, and all will be destroyed. Burn the straw about the last of May. But those who are too indolent or busy to do this often till their season is past, may melt India-rubber over a hot fire, and smear bandages of cloth or leather previously put tight around the tree. This will prevent the female moth from crossing and reaching the limbs. Tar is used, but India-rubber is better, as weather will not injure it as it will tar, so as to allow the moth to pass over. ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... found himself without one, and asked me for mine, to wipe a smear of black from the ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock

... still their silver-bosom'd Nymphs abhor, 90 The blood-smear'd mansion of gigantic THOR,— —Erst, fires volcanic in the marble womb Of cloud-wrapp'd WETTON raised the massy dome; Rocks rear'd on rocks in huge disjointed piles Form the tall turrets, and the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... is to rise by you, What prize may Nisus from your bounty claim, Who merited the first rewards and fame? In falling, both an equal fortune tried; Would fortune for my fall so well provide!" With this he pointed to his face, and show'd His hand and all his habit smear'd with blood. Th' indulgent father of the people smil'd, And caus'd to be produc'd an ample shield, Of wondrous art, by Didymaon wrought, Long since from Neptune's bars in triumph brought. This giv'n to Nisus, he divides the rest, And equal ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin; but my girl sung a song which was said to be composed by a small country laird's son, on one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love; and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he; for, excepting that he could smear sheep, and cast peats, his father living in the moorlands, he had no more scholar-craft ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... tongue That hush'd the stormy main; Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed: Mountains, ye mourn in vain Modred, whose magic song Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head. On dreary Arvon's shore they lie Smear'd with gore and ghastly pale: Far, far aloof the affrighted ravens sail; The famish'd eagle screams, and passes by. Dear lost companions of my tuneful art, Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart, Ye died amidst your dying ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... all his father's craft and cunning, backed up by the lightning precision of Natty Bell. In all his many hard-fought battles John Barty had ever been accounted most dangerous when he smiled, and he was smiling now. Twice Barnabas staggered back to the wall, and there was an ugly smear upon his cheek, yet as they struck and parried, and feinted, Barnabas, this quick-eyed, swift-footed Barnabas, was smiling also. Thus, while they smiled upon and smote each other, the likeness between ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... for nothing they whistle. The fact that girls strangle their illegitimate children and go to prison for it, and that Anna Karenin flung herself under the train, and that in the villages they smear the gates with tar, and that you and I, without knowing why, are pleased by Katya's purity, and that every one of us feels a vague craving for pure love, though he knows there is no such love—is all that prejudice? That is the one thing, brother, which has survived intact ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... after what happened, and that is why I warned Donovan to be careful. But, as I said, I thought it was like a sword cane or a spring dagger—that only pressure on a certain part was needed to force out the needle with its death-carrying smear of some subtle Indian poison. I never dreamed it ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele

... political point of view, his writing about gold, not very intelligible in itself, and now become undecipherable, was but a smear, and gave no handle to the enemy. Even after the time of James II., and under the "respectable" reign of William and Mary, his caravan might have been seen peacefully going its rounds of the little English country towns. He travelled freely from one end of Great Britain to ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... cowslips in the upland pastures, the hawthorn in the hedges, the elm-boughs high against the breezy sky, the first dog-roses pink upon the briers. Percival turned from them to look at the cloud which hung ever like a dingy smear above Brenthill, and the more he felt their loveliness the more he felt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... the sheep, the bee, Are all my parents more than he: I, a virtue, strange and rare, Make the fairest look more fair, And myself, which yet is rarer, Growing old, grow still the fairer. Like sots, alone I'm dull enough, When dosed with smoke, and smear'd with snuff; But, in the midst of mirth and wine, I with double lustre shine. Emblem of the Fair am I, Polish'd neck, and radiant eye; In my eye my greatest grace, Emblem of the Cyclops' race; Metals I like them subdue, Slave like them to Vulcan too; Emblem ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... no rat there now. The water was in spate with the autumn floods and the muddy ledge on which he had sat at his toilette was an invisible thing that sent up a smear of weed to tremble on the surface. But she continued to crouch down and watch the burn. Better than anything in nature she loved running water, and this was grey and icy and seemed to have a cold sweet smell, and she liked the slight ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... the waistcoat which had figured so conspicuously in all the rumors, it appeared that suspicion had monstrously exaggerated the facts. Instead of a waistcoat plashed with blood—as popular imagination pictured it—it was a gray waistcoat, with one spot and a slight smear of blood, which admitted of a very simple explanation. Three days before, Franz had cut his left hand in cutting some bread; and to this the maid testified, because she was present when the accident occurred. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... was only too pleased to crumple up a crape frill and to smear a black dress with sticky little fingers for the sake of the sugar which Hetty plied ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... in the low greedy sense, as you think. I'm not such a base creature. I'm capable of gratitude, I'm capable of affection. One may live in paint and tinsel, but one isn't absolutely without a soul. Yes, I've got one," the girl went on, "though I do smear my face and grin at myself in the glass and practise my intonations. If what you're going to do is good for you I'm very glad. If it leads to good things, to honour and fortune and greatness, I'm enchanted. If it means your being away always, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... apply salt water (one-half ounce to the quart), extract of witch-hazel, a weak solution of oak bark, or camphorated spirit. If the surface is raw use bland powders, such as oxid of zinc, lycopodium, starch, or smear the surface with vaseline, or with 1 ounce of vaseline intimately mixed with one-half dram each of opium and sugar of lead. In cases of chafing rest must be strictly enjoined. If there is constitutional disorder or acrid sweat, 1 ounce cream of tartar ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... and being easy!" laughed Mortimer. "This thing has to be done good and proper. Come on, let's go out. We'll smear this old town with a mixture of red ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes

... Briscoe, who had taken up, examined, and then smelt the arrow-head, ending by moistening a paper which he drew from his pocket and rubbing the arrow-point thereon, with the result that the paper received a brownish smear and the soft ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... of chap I despises," remarks Tom, pointing to a steady-looking man, without encumbrance, who had just entered the yard, evidently a coachman to a pious family; "see him handle a hoss. Smear—smear—like bees-waxing a table. Nothing varminty about him—nothing of this sort of thing (spreading himself out to the gaze of his admiring auditory), but I suppose he's useful with slow cattle, and that's a consolation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various

... balm which the Krzyzaks will send, you had better smear a dog than a knight whom you love. I ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... woman sat at home and spun flax. They were so poor that they could save nothing at all; all their earnings went in bare food, and when that was gone there was nothing left. At last the old woman had a good idea. "Look now, husband," cried she, "make me a straw ox, and smear it all over with tar."—"Why, you foolish woman!" said he, "what's the good of an ox of that sort?"—"Never mind," said she, "you just make it. I know what I am about."—What was the poor man to do? He set to work and ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous

... experience with distressed brows. All his talking and thinking became to him like the open page of a monthly magazine. Across it this bloody smear, this thing of red ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... spent and dusty. There was looking at him only the little red-eyed maid whom he had tried to comfort at some far-off hour in his life. Her face was all contorted with weeping, and she had a great smear of ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... copyists for. I will correct these sheets for you,—it would be terrible if Mr. O'Mally saw them,—and then you can copy them over again. It must be done by to-morrow morning, so you may have to work late. See that your hands are clean and dry, and then you will not smear it." ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... Why, you—you must, that's all!' Thor gazed at Hicks questioningly—I forgot to add that insect's name—and asked, 'Is it so, Hicks? I got to play for the college?' And when Hicks grinned, 'Sure, Thor, it must be did. Bannister expects you to smear the other teams over the landscape,' that blond Norwegian Viking ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... his rifle against the trestles and stood there, groping in his pocket. A dirty handkerchief, dragged up by his fumbling, hung out by its corner. All along the sharp crease there was a slender smear of blood. He looked down at it and pushed it back out of ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair

... of sunset burning thro' the boughs Died in a smear of red; exhausted hours Cumber'd, and ugly ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... below, and beyond it, what seemed to be the word "Void." And near the foot of the sheet the student of all this chaos could make faintly but unmistakably, "Marvelous Man-l—" the rest of the word being cut off by a broad black smear. "Monster 3 Feet." The remainder ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... should be painted over with candle soot tempered with thin glue, then smear the leaf thinly with white lead in oil as is done to the letters in printing, and then print in the ordinary way. Thus the leaf will appear shaded in the hollows and lighted on the parts in relief; which however comes ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... year when the wave swept us. We were fairly swamped for the moment and all nohow. One evening, retreating on my own line, I came upon some little village—can't remember the name just now, but you know the sort of thing—typical Somme hamlet, a smear of brick-dust with a big notice-board on top, saying, 'THIS IS LE SARS,' or 'POZIERES,' or whatever its name was. Anyway, in this village I found a Divisional H.Q., four Brigade H.Q.'s, and oddities of all sorts sitting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... become unclean &c. Adj.; rot, putrefy, ferment, fester, rankle, reek; stink &c. 401; mold, molder; go bad &c. adj. render unclean &c. adj.; dirt, dirty; daub, blot, blur, smudge, smutch[obs3], soil, smoke, tarnish, slaver, spot, smear; smirch; begrease[obs3];.dabble, drabble[obs3], draggle, daggle[obs3]; spatter, slubber; besmear &c., bemire, beslime[obs3], begrime, befoul; splash, stain, distain[obs3], maculate, sully, pollute, defile, debase, contaminate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... then,' said the old man. 'This evening you must take your child, and open her veins, and smear the wounds of your friend with her blood. And you will see, he will get well ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... blear, With fogs thick enough to shear, And we feel inclined to swear, At the month that comes to smear All things lovely, all things dear; We must bear ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... in the woods began again. They seemed to have no relation to the regularly spaced bursts of smoke along a little smear in the desert earth two thousand yards away—no connection at all with the strong voices overhead coming and going. It was as impersonal as the drive of the sea ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling

... the old rifle and Isom's blood-stained garments, the coroner had taken away the little bag of gold, to be used as evidence, he said. He had taken the money, just as it was in the little sack, a smear of blood on it, after counting it before witnesses and giving her a receipt for the amount. Two thousand dollars; one hundred pieces of twenty dollars each. That was the tale of the contents of the canvas bag which had lain ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... your husband is reading the evening paper, wash your dishes. Washing dishes is an art. Few young wives acquire it. The secret is, a big basin, lots of hot water, lots of soap, and a desire to wash them clean. If you wash them clean, don't smear them over by drying them with a greasy dishcloth. Wash your dishrag and drying towel every day, and hang them up ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... nourished by news from the strange, inartistic colonies, where architecture was not understood. Revelation came to George that the British Empire, which he had always suspected to be an invention of those intolerable persons the Imperialists, was after all something more than a crude pink smear across the map of ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... solemn, dreaming house in the late summer sunshine; he observed a robin issue out from a lime tree and inspect him sideways; and then another robin issue from another lime tree and drive the first one away. Then he noticed a smear of dust on his own left boot, and flicked it off with a handkerchief. Then, as he put his handkerchief away again, he saw Jenny coming ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... royal between them, Cupples using every bit of brain and sinew he possessed to outwit his opponent and Clint watching him as a cat watches a mouse and constantly out-guessing him and "getting the jump" time after time. Cupples had a bleeding lip and a smear of brown earth down one cheek and was a forbidding looking antagonist, and for hours after practice was over Clint had only to close his eyes to visualise the angry, intense countenance of his opponent. Had Clint but known it, ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... had pulled down the neat mission house, and they had pounded and ground the bright red bricks into the finest powder, which mixed with grease formed a paint to smear their naked bodies. Thus the only results of many years' teaching were the death of many noble men, the loss of money, the failure of the attempt; and instead of the enterprise leaving a legacy of inward spiritual grace to these "men and brethren," the missionary establishment ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... Kepta crawled back to his men. The lower part of his face was a red and dripping smear. He screamed an ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North

... that question it seemed that a great hand swept carelessly across the blackness of the farther sky, and smeared it with stars and suns and shining nebulas as a brush might smear dry ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... 373 f.) I decidedly believe that she is meant really to faint. She was no Goneril. She knew that she could not kill the King herself; and she never expected to have to carry back the daggers, see the bloody corpse, and smear the faces and hands of the grooms. But Macbeth's agony greatly alarmed her, and she was driven to the scene of horror to complete his task; and what an impression it made on her we know from that sentence uttered in her sleep, 'Yet who ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... calm contending kings, To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light, To stamp the seal of time in aged things, To wake the morn and sentinel the night, To wrong the wronger till he render right; To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours, And smear with dust their ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... rascal," said the captain, when I told him I never drank ... "I think it would do you good if you got a little smear of beer-froth on your mouth once in a while ... you'd stop looking leathery like a mummy ... you've already got some wrinkles on your face ... a few good drinks would plump you out, make a ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... hearth is growing cauld, And will be caulder still, And sair, sair in the fauld Will be the winter's chill; For peats were yet to ca', Our sheep they were to smear, When my a' passed awa' In the fa' o' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... war here as sadly as a funeral," said Captain Hahn. "A fresh and joyous war—that's what it ought to be! Now, in Flanders, we'd have had that girl in with us at the mess." He laughed his rich, throaty laugh that seemed to lay a smear of himself over the subject of his mirth. "That at the very ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... complete seclusion from the sun, we clambered up the opposing steep emerging from an entanglement of jungle on a high and open ridge which commanded an unimpeded view to the west—a scene of theatrical clarity with a single theatrical smear. From a hollow far below slothful smoke filtered through the matted, sombre, dew-bespangled foliage, rose a few feet, and drifted abruptly, dissolving from diaphanous blue to nothingness. The resonant whooping of a swamp pheasant, antiphonal ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... a boyish face into which his pleading eyes gazed, a face white with the strain of battle, reddened a little on one cheek with a smear of blood, and there was a startled, frightened look in it that did not come of ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood

... would have done this? Or, if you are not ready to agree to that, that a shoe so covered with blood could have failed to leave behind it some hint of its shape, some imprint, however faint, of heel or toe? But nowhere did it do this. We see a smear—and ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... tar, a dead river lies on the snow. Three trees, black frozen flames, make threats At the end of the earth. They pierce With sharp knives the rough air, In which a scrap of bird hangs all alone. A few street lights wade towards the city, Extinguished candles for a corpse. And a smear Of people shrinks together and is soon Drowned in ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... dated from Grosvenor Mansions, written with a quill pen, and the noble lord has had the misfortune to get a smear of ink upon the outer side of his right little finger," remarked Holmes as ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... new to Scotland Yard, but in China it is a very ancient practice. I have seen illiterate men smear their thumbs with ink and make impressions at the foot of documents, such thumb-marks being accepted as in every way equivalent ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... of the person is vanity. Hence the fat Yeri beauties no longer shelter their skins from the burning rays of the sun, and are become as brown as the rest. All the graces have departed from them; their fascinating smiles have vanished; and the rancid cocoa-oil with which they smear themselves may be smelt at many paces distance. In short, either the picture drawn of them by the early travellers was a monstrous flattery, or they are altogether different from what they were. I saw but one handsome girl at Tahaiti; she was the sister of the little King, only fourteen years ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... secretary, walking back and forth, searching everywhere with keen eyes and trained intelligence, especially for signs of violence, a broken window, an overturned table, a weapon, and noting all suspicious stains—mud stains, blood stains, the print of a foot, the smear of a hand and, of course, describing carefully the appearance of a victim's body, the wounds, the position, the expression of the face, any tearing or disorder of the garments. Many times these quick, haphazard jottings, made in the ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... as one great country and lead the world, she will never do so. Our hearts must break. But she will... she will! No one who is watching events can doubt it. Only cynics like Alexei doubt—he doubts everything. And he cannot leave anything alone. He must smear everything with his dirty finger. But he must leave Russia ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... sorts of base motives to him. He was often sorely provoked, but he acted upon the advice of that holy man who tells us that, when people throw mud at us, our wisdom is to leave it to dry, when it will fall off of itself, and not to smear our clothes by trying of ourselves to wipe it off. He had hearty helpers in Ned Brierley and his family; Ned himself being a special support, for the persecutors were all afraid of him. But his chief earthly comforter ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... be sufficient to answer, that the antient Grecians oiled themselves all over; that some nations have painted themselves all over, as the Picts of this island; that the Hottentots smear themselves all over with grease. And lastly, that many of our own heads at this day are covered with the flour of wheat and the fat of hogs, according to the tyranny of a filthy and wasteful fashion, and all this without inconvenience. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... not coldly so. Despite her imperious bearing, there was something seductive about the soft curves of her beautiful body; something to rouse the pulses of a man in the langour of her intensely blue eyes, and the full, sensuous lips, scarlet as a smear of fresh blood. ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... desert place. Curst perchance? I seem to see On the crippled roots of yonder Tree a crimson smear of blood. ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine

... we live in," slowly she replied, "Two other houses worked an' slaved for, when The boy was but a youngster at my side, Some bonds we took the time he went to war; I've spent my strength against the want of age— We've always had some end to struggle for. Now shame an' ruin smear the final page. ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest

... whole more immediately depends; or he may give the latter, viz. the proportions and arrangement of the larger parts and the general masses of light and shade, and leave all the minuter parts of which those parts are composed a mere blotch, one general smear, like the first crude and hasty getting in of the groundwork of a picture: he may do either of these, or he may combine both, that is, finish the parts, but put them in their right places, and keep them in due subordination ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... the case of a young lad who was noticed standing over a stationary iron grating through which he had dropped a small coin. A few moments later the lad was seen of his own accord to take up a rod lying near, smear the end with tar and grease from the wheel of a near by wagon, insert the rod through the grating, and thus recover his lost coin. An analysis of the mental movements involved previously to the actual recovery of the coin will illustrate in general the nature of a conscious ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... soaked in. You will see that the "sooner" is the "better" in this case. Try not to increase the size of the spot, for you must keep the ink from spreading. Then dip fresh cotton in milk, and carefully sop the spot. Do not use the cotton when it is inky; that will smear the carpet and spread the stain. Use fresh bits of cotton, dipped in clean milk, until the stain has disappeared. Then rinse with clean water in the same way, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... what this meant, by pulling out his oily handkerchief rolled up in the form of a ball, and giving himself an elaborate smear, from behind the right ear, up the cheek, across the forehead, and down the other cheek to behind his left ear. After ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... any Finland pool, for the frost-fog hung over river and reservoirs, only just disclosing the long, flat lines of embankment, water, and ice; the barges floating down with the tide were powdered with frost and snow-flakes, and the only colour was the long, red smear across the ice of the western reservoir, beyond which the winter sun was setting into a bank of snow clouds. It was four o'clock, and nothing apparently was moving, either on the ice or the water, not even ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... Midmore's first word, and 'No—I'm only winded—dear,' was Miss Sperrit's, as he lifted her out of her corner, her hat over one eye and her right cheek a smear ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... Shield." It is said that wasps and bees will not sting a person whose skin is covered with honey. And so those who are exposed to the sting of these venomous little creatures smear their hands and faces over with honey, and this, we are told, proves the best shield they can have to keep them from getting stung. And the honey here very well represents the kindness which Jesus teaches us to practise. If kindness, gentleness, and forbearance are found running ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton

... that," laughed the father, Joi. But the aunt said, "Toity!" and, "Drat the boy!" "He shall play," said the father, "some noble part. Who knows but it may be in letters or art? 'Tis a dignified business to make folk think." But the aunt cried, "What! Go messing with ink? And smear all his fingers, and take to drink? Paint hussies and cows, ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis

... and energetic rapacity. They have been known even to gnaw the door-posts of the houses. Nor do they execute their task in so slovenly a way, that, as they have succeeded other plagues so they may have successors themselves. They take pains to spoil what they leave. Like the Harpies, they smear every thing that they touch with a miserable slime, which has the effect of a virus in corroding, or, as some say, in scorching and burning it. And then, as if all this were little, when they can do nothing else, they die;—as if out of sheer malevolence to ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... they went outside, and the glare of the fire above the fall emphasized the obscurity. Now the flames flung an evanescent flash of radiance across the whirling pool and the dark rock's side, and then sank again to a dim smear of yellow brightness while a haze of vapour whirled amidst the snow, for a high wind swept through the canyon. Sometimes they could see the boulders among which they stumbled, and the river frothing at their feet, but for the most part they saw nothing, and ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... of mats. These holy relics are carried in front and the mango tree itself brings up the rear of the procession. While these sacred objects are being handed out of the house, the men who are present rush up, wipe off the hallowed dust which has accumulated on them, and smear it over their own bodies, no doubt in order to steep themselves in their blessed influence. Thus the tree is carried as before to the centre of the temporary village, care being again taken not to let it touch the ground. Then ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... binoculars diligently swept the sharp blue line of horizon. Presently the Third Officer put his glass down. "There she is," said he, "two points on the starboard bow." We all looked, and we saw the tiny smear of smoke on the line. How strange it was; both of us coming up from nowhere and meeting on this roadless waste! In a quarter of an hour we raised her masts and funnel, and then we perceived it was not the Dunottar. Our course was altered ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... quill squeaked softly over the smooth paper, with frequent quick dips into the ink-bottle; a few words would be written swiftly; then a pause, with suspended pen, while the next sentence was forming in the writer's mind. When he miswrote, instead of crossing out the word, he would smear it out with his finger, and rewrite over the smear; so that his page had a mottled appearance. The writing was accompanied by intermittent nods of the head, as one would say, "Sic cogito!" So far as he is concerned, the shadows close ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... instead of iron, the same stone with which they engrave seals: in addition to this they had spears, and on them was the sharpened horn of a gazelle by way of a spear-head, and they had also clubs with knobs upon them. Of their body they used to smear over half with white, 71 when they went into battle, and the other half with red. 72 Of the Arabians and the Ethiopians who dwelt above Egypt the commander was Arsames, the son of Dareios and of Artystone, the daughter of Cyrus, whom Dareios loved most of all his wives, and ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... eyes away from her child. Flora had smear on her face; her hands were grimed with the floor. One of her stockings was down: her little white knee was going to scrape on the floor, be black before it was bloody. So—A long shining table under a cold gas spurt. A store with clothes and a stove: no place ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the tsetse shows to animal excreta, as exhibited when a village is placed in its habitat, has been observed and turned to account by some of the doctors. They mix droppings of animals, human milk, and some medicines together, and smear the animals that are about to pass through a tsetse district; but this, though it proves a preventive at the time, is not permanent. There is no cure yet known for the disease. A careless herdsman allowing a large number ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... you women, go down-stairs again, every one of you; I won't have you here. Look!" says Mr. Superintendent, suddenly pointing to a little smear of the decorative painting on Miss Rachel's door, at the outer edge, just under the lock. "Look what mischief the petticoats of some of you have done already. Clear out! clear out!" Rosanna Spearman, who was nearest to him, and ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... terrible grimace, it gave me a great fright and I thought it was a most important thing,[15] but I warrant that you frightened even Schott's men,[16] you with your fierce look and your holiday hopping step. But it is very improper for such folk to smear themselves with civet. You want to become a real silk-tail and you think that, if only you manage to please the girls, the thing is done. If you were only as taking a fellow as I am, it would not provoke me so. You have so many loves that merely to pay each one a visit you would ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... some had become accustomed to smear needles with poison and then to prick with them whomsoever they would. Many persons thus attacked died without even knowing the cause, and many of the murderers were informed against and punished. And this went on not only in Rome but over practically ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... her hair streamed about her, the skirt was blown aside; but she held on with set lips and two vivid spots of colour in her warm-tinted face, a length or two behind her companion. He was riding hard, and there was a red smear across his face where a branch had ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... quite. There was a loud crash; one of my pommels gave me an awkward dig in the side. I saw the white star on my horse's forehead shoot below me; and the muddy, gravelly lane seemed to rise in my face and rasp my hands and smear my habit, and get conglomerated with my hair. The horsemen were all round me when I got up. I did not care for my accident; I did not care for being bruised—in fact, I did not know whether I was hurt or not—but my prevailing feeling was one of burning shame and ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... exhalations, Sends the white fog from the fen-lands, Sends disease and death among us! 40 "Take your bow, O Hiawatha, Take your arrows, jasper-headed, Take your war-club, Puggawaugun, And your mittens, Minjekahwun, And your birch canoe for sailing, 45 And the oil of Mishe-Nahma, So to smear its sides, that swiftly You may pass the black pitch-water; Slay this merciless magician, Save the people from the fever 50 That he breathes across the fen-lands, And avenge my father's murder!" Straightway then my Hiawatha Armed ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... wiped his clay-bespattered fingers on his dingy Jean pants, and gripped the offered hand, appearing homelier than ever because of a smear ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... too, that Leipzig ought to have been too precious in his eyes, for him to smear his drivel and snivel on so honorable and famous a city; but in his own imagination he is no ordinary man. I perceive that if I permit the petulance of all these thick-heads, even the bath-maids will finally write ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... fortune. Whenever a luckless traveller falls into their clutches they make the incident count for something. They stand expectantly about in their box-like public room; their whole stock consists of a little diluted wine and mastic, and if a bit of black bread and smear-lease is ordered, one is putting it down in the book, while the other is ferreting it out of a little cabinet where they keep a starvation quantity of edibles; when the one acting as waiter has placed the inexpensive morsel before you, he goes over to the book to make sure that ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... Odyssey Pallas Athene says that Odysseus had come from Ephyra from Ilus, son of Mermerus: "For even thither had Odysseus gone on his swift ship to seek a deadly drug, that he might have wherewithal to smear his bronze-shod arrows: but Ilus would in no wise give it to him, for he had in awe the everlasting gods."[203] Here is an extension to society in general of a principle which had been first worked out in the group; for poisoning without the ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... an elf or a goblin come, smear his forehead with this salve, put it on his eyes, cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... and, stepping on board of her by the plank which communicated with the quay, the first thing that he did was to run to the mainmast and embrace it with both arms, although there was no small portion of tallow on it to smear the cloth of his coat. "Oh; my dear Vrow, my Katerina!" cried he, as if he were speaking to a female. "How do you do? I'm glad to see you again; you have been quite well, I hope? You do not like being laid up in this way. Never mind, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... deadly white from his exertions, both on the land and in the water. Soaking and stained, with a smear of blood on his white shoulder and another on his brow, there was still in his whole pose and set of face the trace of an inflexible resolution. His opponent's duller and more material mind quailed before the fire and intensity of a ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... places, bent and broken blades of the coarse grass, and ever and again the sufficient intimation of a footmark. And once the leader saw a brown smear of blood where the half-caste girl may have trod. And at that under his breath he cursed her ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... taken from my garments my silver betel-nut box, and was leisurely spreading on a leaf the smear of lime preparatory to enjoying my pan supari, musing the while on the strange little ironies of life that came to my knowledge each day in the discharge of my magisterial functions. All at once a shadow from the open doorway fell across the room. ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... to make a neat, fine-lined sketch with a brush and paint on plain, smooth glass; and, even when this last had been managed, the coloring process often washed out the outlines and made unsightly smudges, and, as every little line, spot or smear shows with painful distinctness when magnified on the sheet, we soon saw that amateur work on these lines would never do. Fortunately I remembered a process, which I once saw used by a microscopist, to make diagrams for the lantern to illustrate his ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... of the smear of flying dust, loomed a lurching black shape;—gigantic, terrible. It was coming straight toward the car; still almost in mid-road. Behind, less distinct, appeared running men. And a shot was fired. Somebody had run indoors for a pistol, before joining the ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... any hectic language, for I am a lady. I might forget myself and smear one all over you. Wilbur, are you going to sit up there and see your near-bride insulted by a woman? If you don't come back here and make her stop abusing me I'll take and bump your two hearts together. Now that goes if you hear it and I am ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... and over all Her rival's face and form she smear'd A deadly drug. The head grew small, And each ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... usual low-hummed chantings. We had with us a small boy of ten or twelve years whose job it was to take care of the dogs and to remove ticks. In fact he was known as the Tick Toto. As this was his first expedition afield, his father took especial pains to smear him with fat from the lioness. This was to make him brave. I am bound to confess ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... perhaps of blue or white cloth; they eat rice or roots, and indeed any description of food, whether beast, reptile, or vermin: they are extremely filthy; this and bad food give them a cutaneous disorder, with which they are very generally afflicted. Several tribes of them smear themselves with oil and pigments, which gives them the appearance of being tattooed. Whether this is intended to defend them against the bites of insects, to operate as a cure or prevention of this epidemic, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... it rushing at her, she saw the end of the patch of gravel. The road ahead was a wet black smear, criss-crossed with ruts. The car shot into a morass of prairie gumbo—which is mud mixed with tar, fly-paper, fish glue, and well-chewed, chocolate-covered caramels. When cattle get into gumbo, the farmers send for ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... where the irritating soap rubbed into his skin, had swollen until the boots held them in a vise-like grip of torture. At each step he lifted pounds of glue-like mud which clung to the legs of his leather chaps in a thick grey smear. And each step was a separate, conscious, painful effort, that required a concentration ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... during the course of the day that she spoke several times out loud, as if conversing with some invisible being. Evening arrived, and the waggons carried off their ripe and luscious loads, leaving the young men and girls racing up and down the pathways, and amongst the vines, endeavouring to smear each other's faces ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... Very successful. Paint the sheep's or goat's nose with Pine Tar, or better still, place salt in a trough, covering it with boards, with holes bored in them just large enough for the animal to insert its nose. Smear Pine Tar about the holes once or twice a week. This treatment has proven very efficient in localities where sheep Gadflies ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... cape, whose silk foundation was suffocated with bugles. A shrill scent of cherry-blossom ran with her like a crowd, and in her hand she carried an umbrella and a plush bag with a steel snap. Her face, in the midst of this whirlpool of finery, peeped out anxiously, covered as it was with a smear of paint and powder, and when she saw Valentine standing alone to receive her, her nervous eyes ranged uncomfortably about in obvious quest of an ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... black smear was on Baby Akbar's forehead, and despite the smudge, he looked a very fine little fellow indeed. So much so that quite a murmur of delighted admiration ran round the assemblage when Askurry appeared, leading him by the hand; for he had quickly ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... number about 800 all told, and hail from the places given below. Among them are many fine physically developed men, who would be considered good looking were it not for the extravagance with which they be-smear their faces with pigments ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

... completed, and the house thoroughly evacuated, the next operation is to smear the walls and ceilings with brushes dipped into a solution of lime, called whitewash; to pour buckets of water over every floor; and scratch all the partitions and wainscots with hard brushes, charged with soft ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... lifting it, found the flags inside neatly rolled and stowed in order. On the table lay my father's Bible and his pocket Virgil, the latter open and laid face downwards. I picked it up, and the next moment came near to dropping it again with a shiver, for a dry smear of blood crossed ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... of the desert lies on your hair and your feet are scratched with thorns and your body is scorched by the sun. Come with me, Honorius, and I will clothe you in a tunic of silk. I will smear your body with myrrh and pour spikenard on your hair. I will clothe you in hyacinth and put honey ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde

... the earlier part of the sixteenth century, heard much of a fabled king whom they called El Dorado. [27] This king, it was said, used to smear himself with gold dust at an annual religious ceremony. In time the idea arose that somewhere in South America existed a fabled country marvelously rich in precious metals and gems. These stories stirred the imagination of the Spaniards, who ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... say about it is that this particular shoe ought to be sent to the cobbler's. There's a small hole in the middle of the sole," I said, "and it should also have this smear of red clay wiped off," I added, as I pointed to the stain along the outer side of ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry

... have reduced almost any life-form which moved into its field to a rather thin smear, but there wasn't even that left of the yellow demon-shape. Something, presumably something it was carrying, had turned it into a small blaze of incandescent energy as the mine flattened it out. Which explained the sound like a cloudburst. That had been the passage's ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... that he swung and swayed, He gambolled far and near, And everywhere he thrust himself He left a soapy smear. ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... is," and I reached over and left a smear of loam across the back of his hand, while I brought away a brown circle around my wrist that the responsive grasp of his fingers left. "Do you want me single-handed to ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... with the sound of blows. A moment later there came, to my horror, a rush of footsteps coming in my direction, with the loud breathing of a running man. I turned my lantern down the long, straight passage, and there was the fat man, running like the wind, with a smear of blood across his face, and close at his heels, bounding like a tiger, the great black-bearded Sikh, with a knife flashing in his hand. I have never seen a man run so fast as that little merchant. He was gaining on the Sikh, and I could see that if he ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... bawling? I'll see to it that you've something to bawl for, but as I started to say, it was my thrift that brought me to my fortune. I was just as tall as that candlestick when I came over from Asia; every day I used to measure myself by it, and I would smear my lips with oil so my beard would sprout all the sooner. I was my master's 'mistress' for fourteen years, for there's nothing wrong in doing what your master orders, and I satisfied my mistress, too, during that time, you know what I mean, but I'll say no more, for ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... front of them. His face had a look of foolish ecstasy. He stared at Mr. Parsons, and as he stared he panted. There was a red smear on his white breast; his open jaws still dripped a pink slaver. It sprayed the ground in front of them, jerked out with ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... falling down, and was met on the veranda by Charnock's dogs. They sprang upon him with welcoming barks, and pushing through them, he entered the untidy living-room. Charnock sat at a table strewn with papers that looked like bills, and there was a smear ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... waving fronds seventy or eighty feet above the earth. There was no underbrush between the tall gray columns of the palms, only a twisted vegetation covered the ground, and the red volcanic soil of the trail, cutting through the green, was like a smear of blood. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... mention this to mark the quaint Notion of "Peace" the public has, That wants to smear the Town with paint, To whoop and jubilate and jazz; And while our flappers beat the floor There's Russia soaked in seas of gore, And LENIN waxing beastly fat; Nobody seems ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various



Words linked to "Smear" :   alimentary tract smear, blood, duodenal smear, splodge, calumny, begrime, error, hatchet job, obloquy, charge, accuse, bemire, dust, dirty, splotch, sully, blotch, fingermark, cover, fault, cytologic specimen, traducement, assassinate, mar, resmudge, traduce, libel, grime, mistake, fingerprint, bronchoscopic smear, drag through the mud, defect, defamation, moil, malign, badmouth, calumniation, blemish, inkblot, colly, soil, rub



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