Noun: smirch
| Singular | smirch |
| Plural | smirches |
Sample Sentences
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Too often, in the years between 800 and 1050, the everyday sun declined through the smirch of flame and smoke of a monastery or town robbed and burnt. [1998, Michael Foss, People of the First Crusade, →ISBN, page 6:]
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there were some business transactions which savored of dangerous speculation, if not dishonesty; and around it all lay the smirch of the Freedmen's Bank. [2008, W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, →ISBN, page 33:]
Nouns inflected like smirch
penniless-bench,
wintergrass,
kitchen pass,
grey fox,
grey box,
trailer hitch,
paleness,
loaded march,
Tush Push,
horribleness,
slaughteress,
chapparvovirus,
greenwax,
royal flush,
crab cactus,
geostress,
syngas,
wintercress,
ichthys,
ichthus, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English *smorchen ("to spatter, soil"; attested in besmorchid (“bespattered, soiled all over”)), of uncertain origin. Perhaps a derivative of Middle English smeoren, smuren, smeren (“to smear”) or related to Middle English smotry (“sooty, grimy”). Compare also Middle English bismotered (“bespattered, soiled”), Old French esmorcher (“to torture”), Middle English smoterly, smoterlich (“besmirched”), modern English smut. See: English Nouns '
smut'.