Mudslinging is when someone says bad things about a person — often untrue, or only half-true — so that other people will think poorly of them. The picture in the word is throwing mud: once it sticks, other people still see the stain. You hear it most in politics, around elections, when one side tries to make the other look greedy, stupid, or dishonest. Newspapers and campaign talk still use it, and the speaker almost always means it as a criticism; nobody cheerfully calls their own words mudslinging. Though actually, people also stretch it to mean mean gossip at work or online, not only politics. It is informal in feel, a little old as a picture, and it names a kind of attack, not a calm argument with facts.

抹黑；潑髒水（多半選舉或罵戰，不是真的甩泥）