- 1
To besmirch someone is to spoil the good name people have of them — to stain it with words or deeds so that others think less of them. You besmirch a reputation, an honour, a memory. Though actually the old picture is of real dirt on cloth; today the dirt is almost always on a name, not on a shirt. It is a formal, slightly old word, the kind newspapers and novels like. In daily talk people say smear, or ruin someone’s name. It is a strong charge: you use it when the harm is to honour, not when you spill sauce.
抹黑；玷污（多指名聲）
組成be- + smirch. Smirch is an older English word meaning to stain or dirty. The be- here is the old prefix that means “all over” or “thoroughly.” So the first picture is “to stain all over.”
同家族的字
- smirchthe base word: to stain or dirty
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
besmirchverb/bɪˈsmɜːtʃ/
- 1
literaryTo make dirty.
- 2
To tarnish something, especially someone's reputation.
- The newspaper was on a campaign to besmirch the actor.
- Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd With rainy marching in the painful field
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。