smirch

What they found was a mostly well-run exercise in civic duty, slightly smirched by honest mistakes quickly rectified — and then buried in an avalanche of fantasy, fever dreams, grifter fiction and “blatherskite.”

Coarse black pepper coats the smirched bark; a thin garnet ring loops just underneath the surface.

Cohn would not scruple over the smirching of reputations.

This was an assembly of delegates eager to feel their own Trump loyalty reflected, acknowledged, and cheered—polished clean of any Cruz smirches.

"It's a smirch that never goes away.... If you dedicated yourself to serving the good, how would you cope with that?"