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smear campaign
noun
- a campaign to tarnish the reputation of a public figure, especially by vilification or innuendo.
Idioms and Phrases
An attempt to ruin a reputation by slander or vilification, as in This press agent is well known for starting smear campaigns against her clients' major competitors . This phrase was first recorded in 1938 and uses smear in the sense of “an attempt to discredit” or “slander.”Example Sentences
Brand denied those allegations and maintained they were part of a coordinated smear campaign against him in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson last year.
A Qatari official also dismissed the probe as a "smear campaign" against Qatar, which has played a key role as a mediator between Israel and Hamas during the war in Gaza.
In her suit, she alleged that he pressured her to perform more nudity than agreed upon, improvised intimate scenes and retaliated with a smear campaign after she raised concerns.
Lively has accused Baldoni and others of carrying out a smear campaign against her after she complained about alleged sexual harassment on set.
Baldoni, meanwhile, has accused Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and their publicist of carrying out a smear campaign against him, and claim that she tried to take over control of the film.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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