besmear
Americanverb (used with object)
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to smear all over; bedaub.
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to sully; defile; soil.
to besmear someone's reputation.
verb
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to smear over; daub
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to sully; defile (often in the phrase besmear ( a person's ) reputation )
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of besmear
before 1050; Middle English bismeren, Old English besmerian. See be-, smear
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He will as surely soil and besmear with sin your moral garments as would contact with the most filthy object imaginable your outer garments.
From Plain Facts for Old and Young by John Harvey Kellogg
In all history it has been shown that he who seeks to besmear others usually leaves the greatest amount of mud on himself.
From My Attainment of the Pole by Frederick A. Cook
“They are gentlemen, no matter how much you may wish to besmear them with low epithets.”
From The Squatter and the Don by C. Loyal
I lose myself in the recollections of my childhood like an old man … I do not expect anything further in life than a succession of sheets of paper to besmear with black.
From The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters by Aimée G. Leffingwel McKenzie
Dark streams of welling blood besmear Thy limbs where dust and mire adhere, Nor have I strength, weighed down by woe, Mine arms about thy form to throw.
From The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Ralph T. H. (Ralph Thomas Hotchkin) Griffith
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
