Schmeared

Part of speech: verb, adjective

Definitions

1. Spread thickly over a surface, as cream cheese is spread on bread ; paid off or bribed with money or favors to secure a favorable result
2. Coated thickly with a soft substance such as cream cheese ; having been bribed or secretly paid to gain an advantage
3. Spread or daubed across a surface in a thick layer ; bought off with a payment or favor, usually through corrupt dealings

Etymology: Before "schmeared" described cream cheese on a bagel, the verb it comes from ran through a much seamier range of meanings. "Schmear" is borrowed from Yiddish "shmir," meaning "smear" or "spread," and it is closely related to German "schmieren." The same Yiddish family gave English a second sense: "shmirn" meant "to smear" but also "to bribe," on the reasoning that a bribe greases the wheels of an interaction, the way a smear of fat lubricates a machine. English "schmear" is a doublet of "smear," the two sharing a common Germanic ancestry but arriving by different routes. The "schm-" beginning is an ordinary-looking Yiddish-English pattern, and the word's bribery sense is the one that most surprises readers who know it only from breakfast menus. "Schmeared" is simply the past tense and past participle of "schmear," so its meaning follows directly from the verb's spread-thickly sense.