Smear

How to spell smear

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce smear

What does smear mean?

1. verbTo spread a soft or sticky substance over a surface, often messily.
2. nounA mark or streak left by something soft, greasy, or sticky.
3. nounA false accusation intended to damage someone's reputation.
4. nounA sample of cells spread on a slide for laboratory examination.

Smear in a sentence

• verb

  He likes to smear butter thickly across his toast.

• noun

  A greasy smear covered the lens of her glasses.

• noun

  The politician dismissed the report as a deliberate smear by rivals.

• noun

  The clinic sent a reminder about her annual cervical smear.

• verb

  Try not to smear paint on the window frames.

• noun

  There was a smear of chocolate on his shirt collar.

Where does smear come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from the Old English verb smerian or smierwan, meaning 'to anoint, to rub with grease or ointment', which was tied to the noun smeoru meaning 'fat' or 'grease'. It belongs to a wider Germanic family, with close relatives such as the German schmieren 'to grease or smear' and the modern English word for cooking fat, 'smear' once simply meaning the act of buttering or oiling a surface. Over the centuries the literal greasing sense broadened to cover spreading any soft or sticky substance, and then smudging or blurring it. By the early twentieth century it had also picked up its figurative use, where to smear someone means to stain their reputation with damaging accusations. The spelling stays close to its Germanic root, and the tricky part for writers is the 'ea' vowel, which sounds like a long 'ee' yet is not spelled that way.

How the word is built

• smear (single Old English root meaning to anoint or grease); no prefix or suffix