smutch

present singular third person smutches · participle present smutching · participle past smutched · past smutched

1. To soil, stain or smudge.

   Why, that’s my bawcock. What, hast smutch’d thy nose? They say it is a copy out of mine.

   c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]

   3 more examples

   Have you seene but a bright Lilly grow, Before rude hands have touch’d it? Have you mark’d but the fall of Snow, Before the soyle hath smutch’d it?

   1616, Ben Jonson, The Divell is an Asse, London, published 1641, act II, scene 6, page 26

   And then in came a wee girl of seven, with dirty face and pure blue eyes and a smutched and insufficient dress.

   1909, O. Henry, “Supply and Demand”, in Options, New York: Harper, page 126

   Receive them all—and should you choose to touch them With one slant ray of quick, American light, Even the dust will have no power to smutch them, Even the worst will glitter in the night.

   1928, Stephen Vincent Benét, “Invocation”, in John Brown’s Body, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, page 7

   Synonyms: befoul, sully, tarnish, assoil, beclart, bedaub, bedirty, imbrue (especially with blood)

plural smutches

1. A stain, smudge or blot.

   Looking out of her window, she was alerted by a smutch of bronze light glowering on this Anglo-Flemish landscape.

   1979, Patrick White, The Twyborn Affair, Penguin, published 1981, Part 3, p. 411

   4 more examples

   As let a man sticke a Candle to a stone wall, though the Candle do not burne through it, yet it will leaue a shrewd smutch behind it, soyling the wall, so as it will not easily be wyped out. Thus it is with tentations, though they doe not all the mischiefe they would and might doe, they will yet be sure to leaue an impression of filth and staines behinde them.

   1629, John Smith, “An Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer”, in Essex doue, presenting the world with a few of her oliue branches, London: George Edwardes, page 124

   […] Examine well His milk-white hand. The palm is hardly clean— But here and there an ugly smutch appears. Foh! ’twas a bribe that left it.

   1785, William Cowper, “Book IV. The Winter Evening.”, in The Task, a Poem, […], London: […] J[oseph] Johnson; […], →OCLC, page 168

   I could favour you with sundry touches Of the paint-smutches with which the Duchess Heightened the mellowness of her cheek’s yellowness

   1849, Robert Browning, “The Flight of the Duchess”, in Poems, volume 2, London: Chapman and Hall, page 390

   Strether felt his character receive, for the instant, a smutch from all the wrong things he had suspected or believed.

   1903 September 28, Henry James, The Ambassadors, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC