different between sully vs smutch

English

Etymology

From Middle English sulen, sulien (“to become dirty; to defile, pollute, taint”), from Old English sylian (“to soil, pollute; to sully”), from Proto-Germanic *suliw?n?, *sulw?n?, *sulwijan? (“to make dirty; to sully”), from Proto-Indo-European *s?l- (“thick liquid, muck”), perhaps conflated partially with Old French souillier (“to soil”) (modern French souiller) from the same Germanic source. The word is cognate with Danish søle (“to sully”), Dutch zaluwen (“to sully”) (Middle Dutch saluwen (“to sully”)), German sühlen (“to sully”), Old Saxon sulian (“to sully”), Swedish söla (“to sully”). Also compare Middle English sulpen (“to defile, pollute”), Old English solian (“to soil, become defiled, make or become foul”), and see more at soil.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /?s?li/
• Rhymes: -?li
• Hyphenation: sul?ly

Verb

sully (third-person singular simple present sullies, present participle sullying, simple past and past participle sullied)

1. (transitive) To soil or stain; to dirty.

   Synonym: (obsolete) sowl
2. (transitive) To corrupt or damage.
3. (intransitive, ergative) To become soiled or tarnished.

Alternative forms

• sullow

Coordinate terms

• (to corrupt or damage): besmirch, debase, stain, tarnish

Derived terms

• besully
• unsullied
• unsully

Translations

Noun

sully (plural sullies)

1. (rare, obsolete) A blemish.

References

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

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