Smearer
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Someone who smears.; Someone who spreads a substance across a surface.
"The walls, strongly built of stones, are still breast-high, and the marks of the smearers’ fingers on the plaster inside plainly visible."
- 2 Someone who smears.; Someone who tries to damage another's reputation through slander or innuendo. derogatory
"Spiro Agnew thought it enough to label journalists as liberals in order to establish their untrustworthiness, which is the method of a smearer in all ages."
- 3 Someone who smears.; An unskillful painter. derogatory
"[…] a picture painted by some German smearer of the early sixteenth century; very ugly, stupid, and unattractive; ill drawn, ill composed, of a uniform hard, vulgar brown."
- 4 Someone who smears.; A worker employed to apply a tar-based salve to sheep to protect their skin during the winter. Scotland, historical
"[…] when the smearer had inlaid with his mixture of butter and tar, that number of the fleeces of the living flock which it was his daily task thus to cover from the cold,"
- 5 Someone who smears.; A person without skill or education who attempts to cure diseases. derogatory, obsolete
"[…] neither parte is nowe vsed only of the experte professors therof, but rather of euery smearer, that listeth to abuse them. For as the phisiciens thynke their learnyng sufficient, without practise or experience: so the chirurgien for the moste parte hauyng experience and practise, thinketh it vnnedefull to haue any learnyng at all,"
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- 6 Something used for smearing.
"The polished edge of a slide held between thumb and fingers is touched to a medium-sized fresh drop of blood and pressed against another slide near its end. As soon as the blood spreads across the edge of the smearer, draw it gently and evenly along the lower slide till the drop is exhausted."
- 7 A circuit used to eliminate the overshoot of a pulse.
Example
More examples"The walls, strongly built of stones, are still breast-high, and the marks of the smearers’ fingers on the plaster inside plainly visible."
Etymology
From smear + -er.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.