different between blur vs smutch

English

Etymology

From earlier blurre, probably an alteration of blear, from Middle English bleren, from Old English blerian. Compare Scots blore, bloar (“to blur, cover with blots”). More at blear.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bl?(?)/

Verb

blur (third-person singular simple present blurs, present participle blurring, simple past and past participle blurred)

1. To make indistinct or hazy, to obscure or dim.

2. To smear, stain or smudge.

3. (intransitive) To become indistinct.
4. To cause imperfection of vision in; to dim; to darken.
   • 1819, Joseph Rodman Drake, The Culprit Fay

     His eyes are blurred with the lightning's glare.

5. (obsolete, transitive) To sully; to stain; to blemish, as reputation.

   • Sarcasms may eclipse thine own, / But cannot blur my lost renown.

6. (graphical user interface, transitive) To transfer the input focus away from.
   • 2003, John Pollock, JavaScript: A Beginner's Guide, Second Edition (page 175)

     Then give this box focus to blur the first one: […]

   • 2001, Martin Webb, Michel Plungjan, Keith Drakard, Instant JavaScript (page 678)

     These form elements need to have an onFocus event handler to blur the current focus.

Synonyms

• (make indistinct or hazy): pixelate, smooth
• (move input focus from): unfocus

Antonyms

• sharpen

Translations

Noun

blur (plural blurs)

1. A smear, smudge or blot
2. Something that appears hazy or indistinct
3. (obsolete) A moral stain or blot.
   • 1548, Nicolas Udall, The first tome or volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus vpon the newe testamente:

     […] with her raillyng sette a great blurre on myne honesty

Derived terms

• motion blur

Translations

Adjective

blur (comparative more blur, superlative most blur)

1. (Malaysia, Singapore, informal) In a state of doubt or confusion.

Anagrams

• Burl, burl

English

Verb

smutch (third-person singular simple present smutches, present participle smutching, simple past and past participle smutched)

1. To soil, stain or smudge.
   • c. 1610,, William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act I, Scene 2,^[1]

     Why, that’s my bawcock. What, hast smutch’d thy nose?

     They say it is a copy out of mine.

   • 1616, Ben Jonson, The Divell is an Asse, London, 1641, Act II, Scene 6, p. 26,^[2]

     Have you seene but a bright Lilly grow,

     Before rude hands have touch’d it?

     Have you mark’d but the fall of Snow,

     Before the soyle hath smutch’d it?

   • 1909, O. Henry, “Supply and Demand” in Options, New York: Harper, p. 126,^[3]

     And then in came a wee girl of seven, with dirty face and pure blue eyes and a smutched and insufficient dress.

   • 1928, Stephen Vincent Benét, John Brown’s Body, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, “Invocation,” p. 7,^[4]

     Receive them all—and should you choose to touch them

     With one slant ray of quick, American light,

     Even the dust will have no power to smutch them,

     Even the worst will glitter in the night.

Noun

smutch (plural smutches)

1. A stain, smudge or blot.
   • 1629, John Smith, Essex doue, presenting the world with a few of her oliue branches, London: George Edwardes, “An Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer,” p. 124,^[5]

     As let a man sticke a Candle to a stone wall, though the Candle do not burne through it, yet it will leaue a shrewd smutch behind it, soyling the wall, so as it will not easily be wyped out. Thus it is with tentations, though they doe not all the mischiefe they would and might doe, they will yet be sure to leaue an impression of filth and staines behinde them.

   • 1785, William Cowper, The Task, London: J. Johnson, Book 4, p. 168,^[6]

     […] Examine well

     His milk-white hand. The palm is hardly clean—

     But here and there an ugly smutch appears.

     Foh! ’twas a bribe that left it.

   • 1849, Robert Browning, “The Flight of the Duchess” in Poems, London: Chapman and Hall, Volume 2, p. 390,^[7]

     I could favour you with sundry touches

     Of the paint-smutches with which the Duchess

     Heightened the mellowness of her cheek’s yellowness

   • 1903, Henry James, The Ambassadors London: Methuen, Chapter 12, page 174,^[8]

     Strether felt his character receive, for the instant, a smutch from all the wrong things he had suspected or believed.

   • 1979, Patrick White, The Twyborn Affair, Penguin, 1981, Part 3, p. 411,^[9]

     Looking out of her window, she was alerted by a smutch of bronze light glowering on this Anglo-Flemish landscape.

Related terms

• smut

Anagrams

• schtum