smear campaign
"smear-campaign" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“smear campaign” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - An effort to damage or call into question someone's reputation, by propounding negative propaganda.
Corpus desk
Index EN-smear-campaign · smear campaign · English
smear campaign · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "S" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | smear campaign |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “smear campaign” in English
Rare enough to double-check
smear campaign is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "An effort to damage or call into question someone's reputation, by propounding negative propaganda.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for smear campaign, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our dataset records no confusable match here, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is smear campaign, spelled S-M-E-A-R- -C-A-M-P-A-I-G-N.
Definition
- 1An effort to damage or call into question someone's reputation, by propounding negative propaganda.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how smear campaign appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
His opponent said it was all a smear campaign to make him look bad in the eyes of the voters.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.