How to Use smeary in a Sentence

smeary

adjective
Definition of smearynext
  • The cleanly cut patterns are as precise as the applied pigment is loose and smeary.
    — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 24 June 2022
  • Say goodbye to the smeary residue some polishes leave and the extra buffing needed to remove it.
    — Carolyn Forte, Good Housekeeping, 17 Aug. 2021
  • The pictures are painted mostly in smeary red and black, framed by large open areas of white canvas or paper.
    — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 16 Aug. 2019
  • What: There are stretches -- a mile here, seven miles there -- where the bottom is soft and the deep earth tones are a cinematographer's smeary dream.
    — Chris Erskine, latimes.com, 10 June 2017
  • At those distances, not a lot of sunlight reaches it, so most observations of the dwarf planet involve just a few smeary pixels.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 11 Oct. 2017
  • Earth and sky are clearly distinguished in the typical Jane Kell landscape, but details of both are soft, smeary and almost vaporous.
    — Washington Post, 14 Jan. 2022
  • So what happens when astronomers disentangle all that weird smeary stuff and reconstruct what the galaxy looks like?
    — Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 8 Feb. 2012
  • Another one, the the Over Zit Spot Patches, can be slapped on over a pesky blemish overnight to absorb excess fluid and keep that smeary spot treatment from ending up on your pillow.
    — Sophie Wirt, Allure, 21 July 2018
  • An early scene, in which the helicopters pass through a ghastly electrical storm, isn’t just the usual thing of shaking cameras, smeary cuts and thunderous sound.
    — Mick Lasalle, Orange County Register, 9 Mar. 2017
  • Sometimes blue neon lights would judder along to her beat, but mostly the images (shot by Frances Arpaia) were smeary, underwater, car-window dreams.
    — Helen Shaw, Vulture, 17 June 2021
  • And, unlike a tap on a screen, swiping up and down adds smeary fingerprints, so that might be alleviated with this new mechanic.
    — David Phelan, Forbes, 24 July 2022
  • Even with higher-res assets, the game's aggressive level of detail (LoD) system turns anything outside of a six-foot radius into a smeary mess.
    — Sam MacHkovech, Ars Technica, 4 June 2020
  • Soren’s work at Transformer Station explores the interplay between images on computer screens and the smeary finger marks people leave on them.
    — Steven Litt, cleveland.com, 15 Sep. 2019
  • In old games, this would add a smeary effect that made everything look awful, but many modern games implement it a bit better, blurring the scenery or certain objects to mimic how that motion might look in a movie.
    — Whitson Gordon, Wired, 6 Oct. 2020
  • The native Washingtonian’s abstractions feature large blocks of smeary, thickly applied color set off by circles, X-shapes and what appear to be rips in the pigment.
    — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 1 July 2022
  • Generally, intense deodorants leave sticky and smeary residues on your clothing.
    — Grooming Playbook, The Salt Lake Tribune, 10 May 2022
  • Meantime, her guitars and synths often aspire to airy, smeary, hornlike communication, and even the drums, for all their tidiness, consistently speak in umphs and hisses.
    — Washington Post, 7 Feb. 2022
  • The monochromatic drawings appear more energetic and spontaneous, with smeary blacks and large areas of white that pull the viewer's eye into the compositions.
    — Washington Post, 8 Apr. 2022
  • The clown makeup is significantly careless and smeary to add realism to the demented character.
    — Scott Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 7 Oct. 2019
  • Even a simple alphabet by the graffiti artist known as Worm is sensuously pictorial, since it’s rendered in bulbous, smeary and hot-colored letters.
    — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 6 Oct. 2022
  • The vitrines with his walking sticks, watercolor brushes, smeary palette; a fishing net on the wall; and a room playing three early 20th-century documentary films of Maine feel as if meant to disguise threadbare patches in the curatorial thesis.
    — Richard B. Woodward, WSJ, 4 July 2018
  • Combining motion blur with frame rate manipulation gave the layered effect a smeary, blended aesthetic — a look based on theoretical physics.
    — Elena Howe, Los Angeles Times, 7 Nov. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'smeary.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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