different between stair vs smirch

English

Etymology

From Middle English steire, staire, stayre, stayer, steir, steyre, steyer, from Old English st??er (“stair, staircase”), from Proto-Germanic *staigriz (“stairs, scaffolding”), from Proto-Indo-European *steyg?- (“to walk, proceed, march, climb”). Cognate with Dutch steiger (“a stair, step, wharf, pier, scaffolding”), Middle Low German steiger, steir (“scaffolding”), German Low German Steiger (“a scaffold; trestle”). Related to Old English ?st??an (“to ascend, go up, embark”), Old English st??an (“to go, move, reach; ascend, mount, go up, spring up, rise; scale”), German Stiege (“a flight of stairs”). More at sty.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /st???/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /st??/
• Rhymes: -??(?)
• Homophone: stare

Noun

stair (plural stairs)

1. A single step in a staircase.

   Synonym: step

2. A series of steps; a staircase.

Synonyms

• (Cockney rhyming slang) apples and pears

Usage notes

• Stairs and stair are used to refer to a single staircase, mostly interchangeably in the UK.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• ladder
• landing

Anagrams

• ISTAR, Ritsa, Sarti, airts, arist, astir, sitar, stria, tarsi, tiars, tisar

Irish

Etymology

From Latin historia. Doublet of stór.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [s?t??a??]

Noun

stair f (genitive singular staire, nominative plural startha)

1. history
2. account, story
3. (literary) repute, fame

Declension

Derived terms

Further reading

• "stair" in Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla, An Gúm, 1977, by Niall Ó Dónaill.
• Entries containing “stair” in English-Irish Dictionary, An Gúm, 1959, by Tomás de Bhaldraithe.
• Entries containing “stair” in New English-Irish Dictionary by Foras na Gaeilge.

English

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -??(?)t?

Etymology 1

Attested since the 15th century; possibly from Old French esmorcher (“to torture”), from Latin morsus (“bitten”).

Noun

smirch (countable and uncountable, plural smirches)

1. Dirt, or a stain.
   • 1998, Michael Foss, People of the First Crusade, page 6, ?ISBN.

     Too often, in the years between 800 and 1050, the everyday sun declined through the smirch of flame and smoke of a monastery or town robbed and burnt.

2. (figuratively) A stain on somebody's reputation.
   • 2008, W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, page 33, ?ISBN.

     there were some business transactions which savored of dangerous speculation, if not dishonesty; and around it all lay the smirch of the Freedmen's Bank.

Verb

smirch (third-person singular simple present smirches, present participle smirching, simple past and past participle smirched)

1. (transitive) To dirty; to make dirty.

   Synonyms: besmirch, soil

   • 1600, William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act I Scene III, lines 101-04

     CELIA. I'll put myself in poor and mean attire,

     And with a kind of umber smirch my face;

     The like do you; so shall we pass along,

     And never stir assailants.

2. (transitive, figuratively) To harm the reputation of; to smear or slander.

   Synonym: besmirch

Derived terms

• besmirch

Translations

References

• Douglas Harper (2001–2021) , “smirch”, in Online Etymology Dictionary

Etymology 2

Meld of smear and chirp

Noun

smirch (plural smirches)

1. A chirp of radiation power from an astronomical body that has a smeared appearance on its plot in the time-frequency plane (usually associated with massive bodies orbiting supermassive black holes)
   • 2003, B. S. Sathyaprakash, BF Schutz, "Templates for stellar mass black holes falling into supermassive black holes", Classical and Quantum Gravity, volume 20, no. 10

     The strain h(t) produced by a smirch in LISA is given by h(t) = ?-A(t)cos[(t) + ?(t)]

   • 2005, John M. T. Thompson, Advances in Astronomy: From the Big Bang to the Solar System, page 133, ?ISBN.

     By observing a smirch, LISA offers a unique opportunity to directly map the spacetime geometry around the central object and test whether or not this structure is in accordance with the expectations of general realtivity.

Anagrams

• chirms, chrism