besmirching

verb (used with object)

to soil; tarnish; discolor.

to detract from the honor or luster of: to besmirch someone's good name.

Origin:
1590–1600; be- + smirch

Related forms

be·smirch·er, noun

un·be·smirched, adjective

Synonyms
2. stain, tarnish, soil, blacken, dishonor, discredit, sully, besmear.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Link To Besmirching

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World English Dictionary

besmirch (bɪˈsmɜːtʃ)

—vb
1.	to make dirty; soil
2.	to reduce the brightness or lustre of
3.	to sully (often in the phrase besmirch (a person's) name)

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Relevant Questions

What Dose Besmirch Mean?

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Besmirching is always a great word to know.

So is lollapalooza. Does it mean:

an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance.

an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.

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Word Origin & History

besmirch

1590s, from be- + smirch.

"Our Gayness and our Gilt are all besmyrcht." ["Henry V," IV.iii.110]

Matching Quote

"Conscience ... lacks the power to externalize itself, the power to make itself into a Thing, and to endure being. It lives in dread of besmirching the splendour of its inner being by action and an existence; and in order to preserve the purity of its heart, it flees from contact with the actual world, and persists in its self-willed impotence to renounce its self which is reduced to the extreme of ultimate abstraction, and to give itself a substantial existence, or to transform its thought into being.... Its activity is a yearning which merely loses itself as consciousness becomes an object devoid of substance, and, rising above this loss, and falling back on itself, finds itself only as a lost soul. In this transparent purity of its moments, an unhappy, so-called 'beautiful soul,' its light dies away within it, and it vanishes like a shapeless vapour that dissolves into thin air."

-Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

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