Word.ws English Dictionary

besmirch

UK/bɪˈsmɜːtʃ//bɪˈsmɝːt͡ʃ/

besmirch verb: to make dirty.

Verb

besmirch (third-person singular simple present besmirches, present participle besmirching, simple past and past participle besmirched)

  1. (literary, transitive) To make dirty.
    Synonyms:
    soil, sully, tarnish, assoil, beclart, bedaub, bedirty, imbrue (especially with blood), bedizen, befile
  2. (transitive) To tarnish something, especially someone's reputation.
    • The newspaper was on a campaign to besmirch the actor.
    • Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd
      With rainy marching in the painful field1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
    Antonyms:
    unbesmirch

besmirch meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

besmirch in Tamil

பெயருக்கு, புகழுக்குக் களங்கம் ஏற்படுத்து

besmirch in Urdu

نام خراب کرنا

besmirch in Bengali

কলঙ্কিত করা, নোংরা করা, সুনাম নষ্ট করা

besmirch in Malayalam

blacken, sully, tarnish
താറടിക്കുക, കളങ്കപ്പെടുത്തുക, കളങ്കം ചാർത്തുക, കരിപൂശുക, കീലടിക്കുക, പേരിനു കളങ്കം വരുത്തുക
More languagesFewer languages
besmirch in Kannada
ಕಲೆಹಿಡಿ, ಕೊಳೆಯಾಗು, ಕೊಳೆಗೊಳ್
besmirch in Thai
ป้ายสี bpâai-sǐi

Examples of besmirch in a sentence

  • "It may be," he replied, "because I will not encounter the dishonor that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman.[…]"1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC:
  • Sir Guy might still have slain him without besmirching his knightly honor1928, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle:

Synonyms of besmirch

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of besmirch

Forms of besmirch

third-person singular presentbesmirches
present participlebesmirching
past participlebesmirched
pastbesmirched

Past tense of besmirch: besmirched

Origin of besmirch

From Middle English besmorchen (attested in besmorchid). Compare Middle English bismotered (“bespattered, soiled”). By surface analysis, be- + smirch.

Words formed from besmirch

Words that rhyme with besmirch

2 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about besmirch

What does besmirch mean?
Besmirch means to make dirty.
What is besmirch in Tamil?
Besmirch in Tamil is பெயருக்கு, புகழுக்குக் களங்கம் ஏற்படுத்து. See Besmirch meaning in Tamil.
How do you use besmirch in a sentence?
"It may be," he replied, "because I will not encounter the dishonor that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman.[…]"
What part of speech is besmirch?
Besmirch is a verb.
How do you pronounce besmirch?
Besmirch is pronounced /bɪˈsmɜːtʃ/ (UK).
What is the past tense of besmirch?
The past tense of besmirch is besmirched.

Words near besmirch in the dictionary

  1. besmell
  2. besmile
  3. besmiled
  4. besmiles
  5. besmiling
  6. besmirch
  7. besmirched
  8. besmircher
  9. besmirchers
  10. besmirches
  11. besmirching

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: besmirch (page history and authors); besmirch (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); besmirch (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); besmirch (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); besmirch (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); besmirch (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-besmirch.ogg, en-au-besmirch.ogg.

Cite this entry: “besmirch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/besmirch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.