slur vs smear

slur

verb
  • To soil; to sully; to contaminate; to disgrace. 

  • To run together; to articulate poorly. 

  • To insult or slight. 

  • To play legato or without separate articulation; to connect (notes) smoothly. 

  • To cover over; to disguise; to conceal; to pass over lightly or with little notice. 

  • To cheat, as by sliding a die; to trick. 

noun
  • In knitting machines, a device for depressing the sinkers successively by passing over them. 

  • An insinuation or innuendo. 

  • An act of running one's words together; poor verbal articulation. 

  • A mark, stain, or smear; (by extension) a slight occasion of reproach. 

  • A disparaging insult or slight, particularly one used to denigrate a specific group. 

  • A set of notes that are played legato, without separate articulation. 

  • The symbol indicating a legato passage, written as an arc over the slurred notes (not to be confused with a tie). 

smear

verb
  • To make something dirty. 

  • To damage someone's reputation by slandering, misrepresenting, or otherwise making false accusations about them, their statements, or their actions. 

  • To become messy or not clear by being spread. 

  • To spread (a substance, especially one that colours or is dirty) across a surface by rubbing. 

  • To cause (something) to be messy or not clear by rubbing and spreading it. 

  • To cause (something) to be a particular colour by covering with a substance. 

  • To climb without using footholds, using the friction from the shoe to stay on the wall. 

  • To cover (a surface with a layer of some substance) by rubbing. 

  • To rub (a body part, etc.) across a surface. 

  • To write or draw (something) by spreading a substance on a surface. 

  • (of a substance, etc.) To make a surface dirty by covering it. 

  • To attempt to remove (a substance) from a surface by rubbing. 

noun
  • A Pap smear (screening test for cervical cancer). 

  • A false or unsupported, malicious statement intended to injure a person's reputation. 

  • Any of various forms of distortion that make a signal harder to see or hear. 

  • A mark made by smearing. 

  • A rough glissando in jazz music. 

  • A maneuver in which the shoe is placed onto the holdless rock, and the friction from the shoe keeps it in contact 

  • A preparation to be examined under a microscope, made by spreading a thin layer of a substance (such as blood, bacterial culture) on a slide. 

How often have the words slur and smear occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )