smearier; smeariest
1
: marked by or covered with smears
2
: liable to cause smears
smeary lipstick

Examples of smeary in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web En route, we’re treated to a hit-or-miss barrage of comedic bits involving a pizza-and-beer blowout, crazy-making fireworks, a rapacious eagle, a four-way urination ritual, a smeary dog-pound escape, an unfortunate (and frankly disturbing) rabbit incident and much else. Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times, 18 Aug. 2023 So step into our lab, where our mad scientists have been hard at work experimenting with several recipes to find the perfect match for your fake blood type (drippy, smeary, clotty and more!). Susan Choung, Good Housekeeping, 5 July 2023 The party aesthetic of the aughts—the messy, smeary, mismatched, American Apparel thing; ripped tights and dirty shoes and everyone looking drunk or hungover all the time—has recently been discovered and repopularized by young people on TikTok and Instagram. Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker, 11 Sep. 2022 The same national shape appears in this show, constructed not of wooden pieces but of smeary, overlapping graphite gestures. Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 8 July 2022 His use of color is as eye-candy bedazzling as Warhol’s, his manipulation of figures on a smeary electromagnetic background a kind of wry commentary on the hypnotic hyper-unreality of television. Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 26 Jan. 2023 Outside its workaday building is the once-industrial neighborhood just west of Penn Station, which congeals in winter into a sort of smeary grottiness. Helen Shaw, Vulture, 19 Jan. 2022 So what happens when astronomers disentangle all that weird smeary stuff and reconstruct what the galaxy looks like? Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 8 Feb. 2012 Combining motion blur with frame rate manipulation gave the layered effect a smeary, blended aesthetic — a look based on theoretical physics. Elena Howe, Los Angeles Times, 7 Nov. 2022

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'smeary.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1529, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of smeary was circa 1529

Dictionary Entries Near smeary

Cite this Entry

“Smeary.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/smeary. Accessed 18 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

smeary

adjective
1
: marked by smears
2
: likely to cause smears

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