smeary

adj

1. Having or showing smears.

   “Pretending to read a smeary newspaper long out of date, which had nothing half so legible in its local news, as the foreign matter of coffee, pickles, fish sauces, gravy, melted butter, and wine, with which it was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 […]”

   “I voice the weary, smeary ones of earth, The helots of the sea and of the soil.”

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

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

2. Tending to smear or soil.

   “[…] 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.

   “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, 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”