different between soil vs smeary

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /s??l/, [s????]
• Rhymes: -??l

Etymology 1

From Middle English soile, soyle, sule (“ground, earth”), partly from Anglo-Norman soyl (“bottom, ground, pavement”), from Latin solium (“seat, chair; throne”), mistaken for Latin solum (“ground, foundation, earth, sole of the foot”); and partly from Old English sol (“mud, mire, wet sand”), from Proto-Germanic *sul? (“mud, spot”), from Proto-Indo-European *s?l- (“thick liquid”). Cognate with Middle Low German söle (“dirt, mud”), Middle Dutch sol (“dirt, filth”), Middle High German sol, söl (“dirt, mud, mire”), Danish søle (“mud, muck”). Compare French seuil (“level; threshold”) and sol (“soil, earth; ground”). See also sole, soal, solum.

Alternative forms

• soyl (obsolete)

Noun

soil (countable and uncountable, plural soils)

1. (uncountable) A mixture of mineral particles and organic material, used to support plant growth.
2. (uncountable) The unconsolidated mineral or organic material on the immediate surface of the earth that serves as a natural medium for the growth of land plants.
3. (uncountable) The unconsolidated mineral or organic matter on the surface of the earth that has been subjected to and shows effects of genetic and environmental factors of: climate (including water and temperature effects), and macro- and microorganisms, conditioned by relief, acting on parent material over a period of time. A product-soil differs from the material from which it is derived in many physical, chemical, biological, and morphological properties and characteristics.
4. Country or territory.

   The refugees returned to their native soil.

   Kenyan soil
5. That which soils or pollutes; a stain.
6. A marshy or miry place to which a hunted boar resorts for refuge; hence, a wet place, stream, or tract of water, sought for by other game, as deer.
7. Dung; compost; manure.

   night soil

Synonyms

• (senses 1 to 3): dirt (US), earth

Derived terms

Related terms

• solum

Translations

See also

• alluvium

Etymology 2

From Middle English soilen, soulen, suylen (“to sully, make dirty”), partly from Old French soillier, souillier (“to soil, make dirty, wallow in mire”), from Old Frankish *sauljan, *sulljan (“to make dirty, soil”); partly from Old English solian, sylian (“to soil, make dirty”), from Proto-Germanic *sulw?n?, *sulwijan?, *saulijan? (“to soil, make dirty”), from Proto-Indo-European *s?l- (“thick liquid”). Cognate with Old Frisian sulia (“to soil, mire”), Middle Dutch soluwen, seulewen (“to soil, besmirch”), Old High German sol?n, bisulen (“to make dirty”), German suhlen (“to soil, make dirty”), Danish søle (“to make dirty, defile”), Swedish söla (“to soil, make dirty”), Gothic ???????????????????????????????????? (bisauljan, “to bemire”). Compare sully.

Verb

soil (third-person singular simple present soils, present participle soiling, simple past and past participle soiled)

1. (transitive) To make dirty.
2. (intransitive) To become dirty or soiled.

   Light colours soil sooner than dark ones.

3. (transitive, figuratively) To stain or mar, as with infamy or disgrace; to tarnish; to sully.
4. (reflexive) To dirty one's clothing by accidentally defecating while clothed.
5. To make invalid, to ruin.
6. To enrich with soil or muck; to manure.

Synonyms

• (to make dirty): smirch, besmirch, dirty

Derived terms

• soil oneself
• soilage (“act of soiling; condition of being soiled”)

Translations

Noun

soil (plural soils)

1. (uncountable, euphemistic) Faeces or urine etc. when found on clothes.
2. (countable, medicine) A bag containing soiled items.

Synonyms

• (faeces or urine etc.): dirt

Translations

Etymology 3

From Middle English soyl, from Old French soil, souil (“quagmire, marsh”), from Frankish *s?lja, *saulja (“mire, miry place, wallow”), from Proto-Germanic *saulij? (“mud, puddle, feces”), from Proto-Indo-European *s?l- (“thick liquid”). Cognate with Old English syle, sylu, sylen (“miry place, wallow”), Old High German sol, gisol (“miry place”), German Suhle (“a wallow, mud pit, muddy pool”).

Noun

soil (plural soils)

1. A wet or marshy place in which a boar or other such game seeks refuge when hunted.

Etymology 4

From Old French saoler, saouler (“to satiate”).

Verb

soil (third-person singular simple present soils, present participle soiling, simple past and past participle soiled)

1. To feed, as cattle or horses, in the barn or an enclosure, with fresh grass or green food cut for them, instead of sending them out to pasture; hence (due to such food having the effect of purging them) to purge by feeding on green food.

   to soil a horse

Derived terms

• soilage (“fresh-cut forage”)

References

• soil in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Anagrams

• LOIs, Lois, Sol I, oils, silo, soli

Basque

Adjective

soil

1. bald

See also

• burusoil

Rohingya

Etymology

Cognate with Assamese ???? (saul), Bengali ??? (cal), Hindi ???? (c?val)

Noun

soil

1. rice

English

Etymology

From Middle English *smery, *smeri, from Old English smeoruwi? (“fatty, greasy, unctious, smeary”), equivalent to smear +? -y.

Adjective

smeary (comparative more smeary, superlative most smeary)

1. Having or showing smears.

   Synonyms: smeared, smudged, soiled

   • 1861, Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, London: Chapman and Hall, Volume 3, Chapter 4, p. 62,^[1]

     Pretending to read a smeary newspaper long out of date, which had nothing half so legible in its local news, as the foreign matter of coffee, pickles, fish sauces, gravy, melted butter, and wine, with which it was sprinkled all over, as if it had taken the measles in a highly irregular form, I sat at my table […]

   • 1909, Robert W. Service, “The Song of the Mouth-Organ” in Ballads of a Cheechako, Toronto: William Briggs, p. 103,^[2]

     I voice the weary, smeary ones of earth,

     The helots of the sea and of the soil.

   • 1940, Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, Penguin, 2010, Chapter 7, p. 41,^[3]

     They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered colour plates.

   • 1959, Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan, New York: Random House, 2009, Chapter 5, p. 132,^[4]

     The letters were executed clumsily, with a smeary black kindergarten exuberance.

2. Tending to smear or soil.
   • 1986, Stephen King, It, New York: Signet, 1987, Part 3, Chapter 11, p. 523,^[5]

     […] stamped again and again in smeary red ink that looked like blood, was one word: CANCEL.

3. Having a consistency like grease; covered with such a substance.

   Synonyms: adhesive, greasy, sticky, viscous

   • 1582, Richard Stanyhurst (translator), Thee First Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneis, Leiden: John Pates, dedicatory epistle,^[6]

     And are there not diuerse skauingers of draftye poëtrye in this oure age, that bast theyre papers wyth smearie larde sauoring al too geather of thee frying pan?

   • 1896, W. S. Gilbert, The Grand Duke, Act I, in The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan, New York: The Modern Library, 1936, p. 675,^[7]

     When your lips are all smeary—like tallow,

     And your tongue is decidedly yallow,

     With a pint of warm oil in your swallow,

     And a pound of tin-tacks in your chest—

Derived terms

• smearily
• smeariness

Anagrams

• Rameys, Ramsey, my arse