smearer

From smear +‎ -er.

smearer (plural smearers)

1. Someone who smears.
   1. Someone who spreads a substance across a surface.
      • 1900, Albert B. Lloyd, Uganda to Khartoum‎, London: Collins’ Clear-Type Press, ’Chapter 12, p. 254:

        The walls, strongly built of stones, are still breast-high, and the marks of the smearers’ fingers on the plaster inside plainly visible.

      • 1911, Henry Pike Bowie, chapter 2, in On the Laws of Japanese Painting‎, San Francisco: Paul Elder, page 21:

        […] most of the Ukiyo e, or pictures in the popular style, are prints struck from wood blocks and are the joint production of the artist, the wood engraver, the color smearer and the printer, all of whom have contributed to and are more or less entitled to credit for the result:

   2. (derogatory) Someone who tries to damage another's reputation through slander or innuendo.

      Synonyms: libeler, slanderer, vilifier

      • 1974, Thomas Griffith, chapter 3, in How True: A Skeptic’s Guide to Believing the News,‎, Boston: Little, Brown, page 23:

        Spiro Agnew thought it enough to label journalists as liberals in order to establish their untrustworthiness, which is the method of a smearer in all ages.

      • 2003, Thomas J. Gardner and Terry M. Anderson, Criminal Law, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 8th edition, Part 4, Chapter 17, p. 374,

        The cyber smearer puts out false information on the Internet about the company, leading people to sell shares, driving the price down.

   3. (derogatory) An unskillful painter.^[1]

      Synonym: dauber

      • 1880, Vernon Lee, “Faustus and Helena”, in Belcaro: Being Essays on Sundry Aesthetical Questions‎, London: W. Satchell, page 91:

        […] a picture painted by some German smearer of the early sixteenth century; very ugly, stupid, and unattractive; ill drawn, ill composed, of a uniform hard, vulgar brown.

      • 1992, April Kingsley, “Summer”, in The Turning Point‎, New York: Simon & Schuster, page 204:

        He made his living as a housepainter when he first came to this country and says even now, “I was a good one—not a smearer.”

   4. (Scotland, agriculture, historical) A worker employed to apply a tar-based salve to sheep to protect their skin during the winter.
      • 1807, Robert Heron, The Comforts of Human Life‎, London: Oddy and Co., Dialogue 4, page 110:

        […] when the smearer had inlaid with his mixture of butter and tar, that number of the fleeces of the living flock which it was his daily task thus to cover from the cold,

      • 1841, chapter 39, in British Husbandry‎, volume 2, London: Baldwin & Cradock, page 478:

        The animal is placed upon a stool just broad and long enough to contain his body either when laid across or at length; and having a narrow projection at one end, forming a seat on which the smearer sits astride.

      • 1893, James Cameron Lees, Stronbuy; Or, Hanks of Highland Yarn‎, Edinburgh: Macniven & Wallace, page 168:

        I know of a farm having a sheep stock of 5000 head; it gives permanent employment to seven shepherds, six hands at clipping, twelve smearers for six weeks, three extra hands at wintering, and three extra at lambing.

      • 1895, John A. Steuart, chapter 21, in In the Day of Battle‎, London: Sampson Low, Marston, page 256:

        […] I emptied the trickling mire upon my baking wound, rubbing it in with my fingers as a smearer rubs his tar into the divided fleece of a sheep.

      • 1910, Duncan Campbell, Reminiscences and Reflections of an Octogenarian Highlander, Inverness: Northern Counties Newspaper and Printing and Publishing Company, Chapter 33, p. 217,

        Smearing has long been displaced by dips, to the detriment of the poor sheep . It could not be kept on much longer than it was, because with the desolation of the country districts, smearers were not to be found in most places.

   5. (obsolete, derogatory) A person without skill or education who attempts to cure diseases.

      Synonym: quack

      • 1565, John Halle, A most excellent and learned vvoorke of chirurgerie, called Chirurgia parua Lanfranci Lanfranke of Mylayne his briefe‎, London: Thomas Marshe, Letter to the reader:

        […] neither parte is nowe vsed only of the experte professors therof, but rather of euery smearer, that listeth to abuse them. For as the phisiciens thynke their learnyng sufficient, without practise or experience: so the chirurgien for the moste parte hauyng experience and practise, thinketh it vnnedefull to haue any learnyng at all,

2. Something used for smearing.
   • 1905, James Rae Arneill, chapter 4, in Clinical Diagnosis and Urinalysis: A Manual for Students and Practitioners‎, Philadelphia: Lea Brothers, page 50:

     The polished edge of a slide held between thumb and fingers is touched to a medium-sized fresh drop of blood and pressed against another slide near its end. As soon as the blood spreads across the edge of the smearer, draw it gently and evenly along the lower slide till the drop is exhausted.

3. (electronics) A circuit used to eliminate the overshoot of a pulse.^[2][3]

• Reamers, reamers