smearer

Noun

smearer (plural smearers)

1. 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.1900, Albert B. Lloyd, Uganda to Khartoum, London: Collins’ Clear-Type Press, ’Chapter 12, p. 254
   • […] most of the Ukiyo e, or pictures in the popular style, are prints struck from wood blocks and are the joint production of the artist, the wood engraver, the color smearer and the printer, all of whom have contributed to and are more or less entitled to credit for the result:1911, Henry Pike Bowie, chapter 2, in On the Laws of Japanese Painting, San Francisco: Paul Elder, page 21
2. (derogatory) Someone who tries to damage another's reputation through slander or innuendo.
   • 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.1974, Thomas Griffith, chapter 3, in How True: A Skeptic’s Guide to Believing the News,, Boston: Little, Brown, page 23
   • The cyber smearer puts out false information on the Internet about the company, leading people to sell shares, driving the price down.2003, Thomas J. Gardner and Terry M. Anderson, Criminal Law, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 8th edition, Part 4, Chapter 17, p. 374

   Synonyms:

   libeler, slanderer, vilifier

3. (derogatory) An unskillful painter.
   • […] 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.1880, Vernon Lee, “Faustus and Helena”, in Belcaro: Being Essays on Sundry Aesthetical Questions, London: W. Satchell, page 91
   • He made his living as a housepainter when he first came to this country and says even now, “I was a good one—not a smearer.”1992, April Kingsley, “Summer”, in The Turning Point, New York: Simon & Schuster, page 204

   Synonyms:

   dauber

4. (Scotland, historical) A worker employed to apply a tar-based salve to sheep to protect their skin during the winter.
   • […] 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,1807, Robert Heron, The Comforts of Human Life, London: Oddy and Co., Dialogue 4, page 110
   • The animal is placed upon a stool just broad and long enough to contain his body either when laid across or at length; and having a narrow projection at one end, forming a seat on which the smearer sits astride.1841, chapter 39, in British Husbandry, volume 2, London: Baldwin & Cradock, page 478
5. (derogatory, obsolete) A person without skill or education who attempts to cure diseases.
   • […] 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...1565, John Halle, A most excellent and learned vvoorke of chirurgerie, called Chirurgia parua Lanfranci Lanfranke of Mylayne his briefe, London: Thomas Marshe, Letter to the reader

   Synonyms:

   quack

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.1905, James Rae Arneill, chapter 4, in Clinical Diagnosis and Urinalysis: A Manual for Students and Practitioners, Philadelphia: Lea Brothers, page 50
7. A circuit used to eliminate the overshoot of a pulse.