smirch
/smɜː(ɹ)t͡ʃ/
smirch noun: dirt, or a stain.
Noun (1)
smirch (countable and uncountable, plural smirches)
- Dirt, or a stain.
- Too often, in the years between 800 and 1050, the everyday sun declined through the smirch of flame and smoke of a monastery or town robbed and burnt.1998, Michael Foss, People of the First Crusade, →ISBN, page 6
- A stain on somebody's reputation.
- there were some business transactions which savored of dangerous speculation, if not dishonesty; and around it all lay the smirch of the Freedmen's Bank.2008, W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, →ISBN, page 33
Verb
smirch (third-person singular simple present smirches, present participle smirching, simple past and past participle smirched)
- To dirty; to make dirty.
- CELIA. I'll put myself in poor and mean attire, / And with a kind of umber smirch my face; / The like do you; so shall we pass along, / And never stir assailants.c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
- Girls thought that by leaping over the fires without being smirched they made sure of a happy marriage.1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 10, page 108
- To harm the reputation of; to smear or slander.
- Synonyms:
- besmirch, libel, muddy, abase, bring down to size, cut down to size, debase, defame, degrade, demean
Noun (2)
smirch (plural smirches)
- A chirp of radiation power from an astronomical body that has a smeared appearance on its plot in the time-frequency plane (usually associated with massive bodies orbiting supermassive black holes)
- The strain h(t) produced by a smirch in LISA is given by h(t) = −-A(t)cos[(t) + φ(t)]2003, B. S. Sathyaprakash, BF Schutz, “Templates for stellar mass black holes falling into supermassive black holes”, in Classical and Quantum Gravity, volume 20, number 10
- By observing a smirch, LISA offers a unique opportunity to directly map the spacetime geometry around the central object and test whether or not this structure is in accordance with the expectations of general realtivity.2005, John M. T. Thompson, Advances in Astronomy: From the Big Bang to the Solar System, →ISBN, page 133
smirch meaning in Tamil, Urdu and Kannada
smirch in Tamil
- பெயருக்கு, புகழுக்குக் களங்கம் ஏற்படுத்து, கறை, அழுக்கு, களங்கம்
smirch in Urdu
- کثافت, ننگ
smirch in Kannada
- ಕೊಳೆಹಚ್ಚು, ಕೊಳೆಮಾಡು, ಹೆಸರು ಕೆಡಿಸು
Synonyms of smirch
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of smirch
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | smirches |
| alternative form | smurch |
| alternative form | smerch |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | smirches |
| present participle | smirching |
| past participle | smirched |
| past | smirched |
Origin of smirch
From Middle English *smorchen ("to spatter, soil"; attested in besmorchid (“bespattered, soiled all over”)), of uncertain origin. Perhaps a derivative of Middle English smeoren, smuren, smeren (“to smear”) or related to Middle English smotry (“sooty, grimy”). Compare also Middle English bismotered (“bespattered, soiled”), Old French esmorcher (“to torture”), Middle English smoterly, smoterlich (“besmirched”), modern English smut.
Blend of smear + chirp.
Words formed from smirch
Words that rhyme with smirch
Questions about smirch
- What does smirch mean?
- Smirch means dirt, or a stain.
- What is smirch in Tamil?
- Smirch in Tamil is பெயருக்கு, புகழுக்குக் களங்கம் ஏற்படுத்து, கறை. See Smirch meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is smirch?
- Smirch can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce smirch?
- Smirch is pronounced /smɜː(ɹ)t͡ʃ/.
- What is the plural of smirch?
- The plural of smirch is smirches.
Words near smirch in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: smirch (page history and authors); smirch (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); smirch (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); smirch (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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-smirch.wav.
Cite this entry: “smirch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/smirch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.