smeary

English

Etymology

From Middle English *smery, *smeri, from Old English smeoruwiġ (“fatty, greasy, unctious, smeary”), from Proto-West Germanic *smerwig, equivalent to smear +‎ -y.

Adjective

smeary (comparative smearier, superlative smeariest)

1. Having or showing smears.

   Synonyms: smeared, smudged, soiled

   • 1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter IV, in Great Expectations […], volume III, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 62:

     Pretending to read a smeary newspaper long out of date, which had nothing half so legible in its local news, as the foreign matter of coffee, pickles, fish sauces, gravy, melted butter, and wine, with which it was sprinkled all over, as if it had taken the measles in a highly irregular form, I sat at my table […]

   • 1909, Robert W. Service, “The Song of the Mouth-Organ”, in Ballads of a Cheechako‎^[1], Toronto: William Briggs, page 103:

     I voice the weary, smeary ones of earth,
     The helots of the sea and of the soil.

   • 1940, Raymond Chandler, chapter 7, in Farewell, My Lovely‎^[2], Penguin, published 2010, page 41:

     They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered colour plates.

   • 1959, Kurt Vonnegut, chapter 5, in The Sirens of Titan‎^[3], New York: Random House, published 2009, page 132:

     The letters were executed clumsily, with a smeary black kindergarten exuberance.

2. Tending to smear or soil.
   • 1986, Stephen King, It‎^[4], New York: Signet, published 1987, Part 3, Chapter 11, p. 523:

     […] stamped again and again in smeary red ink that looked like blood, was one word: CANCEL.

3. Having a consistency like grease; covered with such a substance.

   Synonyms: adhesive, greasy, sticky, viscous

   • 1582, Richard Stanyhurst, transl., Thee First Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneis‎^[5], Leiden: John Pates, dedicatory epistle:

     And are there not diuerse skauingers of draftye poëtrye in this oure age, that bast theyre papers wyth smearie larde sauoring al too geather of thee frying pan?

   • 1896, W. S. Gilbert, The Grand Duke, Act I, in The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan, New York: The Modern Library, 1936, p. 675,^[6]

     When your lips are all smeary—like tallow,

     And your tongue is decidedly yallow,

     With a pint of warm oil in your swallow,

     And a pound of tin-tacks in your chest—

Derived terms

• smearily
• smeariness

Anagrams

• Rameys, Ramsey, my arse