smeared, ppl. a.
(smɪəd)
[f. smear v. + -ed1.]
1. In contemptuous use: Anointed.
| 1550 Bale Apol. 17 The popes Smered presthod. 1554 Hilarie Resurr. Masse A viij, My smered Chaplens..I make them to be called Syrs euery one. 1583 Stubbes Anat. Abus. (1882) ii. 70 Being a greasie priest, and smered prelate. |
2. a. Dirtied or soiled by smearing; bedaubed.
| 1584–7 Greene Carde of Fancie Wks. (Grosart) IV. 62 Pasiphæ preferred a Bull before a King, and Venus a smeered Smith before Mars the God of battaile. 1621 G. Sandys Ovid's Met. v. (1626) 92 Nor could he fall; but..Hung by the hand against the smeared post. 1684 Symson Descr. Galloway (1823) 72 The most part of their laid-wool, call'd in other parts smear'd wool, is..so called, because..they melt butter and tar together, and therewith they..smear their sheep. 1795 in Robertson Agric. Perth (1799) 533 The smeared kind at 7s. or 8s. per stone; and their white wool from 8s. to 10s. 1840 Barret Water Colour Painting 16 While the smeared part is being cleaned with India-rubber. 1865 Dickens Mut. Fr. ii. xv, Holding out his smeared hand. |
b. smeared dagger, a species of moth.
| 1883 W. Saunders Insects Inj. Fruits 325 The Smeared Dagger, Apatella oblinita... This pecularity being partly obliterated in this species, it has received the common name of the ‘smeared dagger’. |
3. a. Laid on in a smearing manner.
| 1820 Keats Isabella li, The smeared loam With tears, as chilly as a dripping well, She drench'd away. |
b. smeared out: spread out, distributed; averaged over a volume of space or a period of time.
| 1931 Nature 8 Aug. 211/1 It can be represented..by supposing each electron to move in the field of the nucleus and the other electrons, representing it by the ‘smeared out’ continuous distribution which the solution of the wave equation gives, and then taking the electron atmosphere to be the sum of these distributions. 1977 New Scientist 21 Apr. 120/2 By measuring their extinction properties at a single wavelength we could show that the smeared-out density of dust grains is a few per cent of the density of all matter in interstellar space. 1979 Nature 18 Jan. 188/1 This behaviour..will be completely smeared out at experimental temperatures. 1979 Sci. Amer. Nov. 128/1 A wave function..often describes the electron as if it were smeared out over a large region of space. |