defame
If defamation leads to a loss of earnings, does the victim have a right to seek compensation?
Defamation law treats websites and their bulletin boards in the same way as a newspaper, holding a publisher liable for their content.
His lawyers filed four civil defamation cases against the company.
Three journalists were charged with criminal defamation.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Damaging reputation
anti-defamation
aspersion
besmirch
black mark
blacken
blot
defame
demonize
dog
drag someone's name through the mire/mudidiom
give a dog a bad nameidiom
hatchet job
scurrilous
scurrilously
self-immolation
show someone in a bad lightidiom
slander
slur
smear
tarnish

defamation | Business English

defamation
noun[ U ]
uk /ˌdefəˈmeɪʃən/us
LAW
the act of harming someone's reputation by saying or writing bad things about them:
The lawsuit accused his former associates of defamation.
One member of the team is suing for slander and defamation of character.
a defamation lawsuit/case/action

Examples of defamation

defamation
He separated those out and listed them in detail, which enabled me to find with ease the defamation actions.
The laws of a country concerning defamation played a crucial role in the types of cases which would be brought.
This is particularly evident in the defamation litigation heard by the university courts.
Two previous writers on defamation have also done this.
Degradation and defamation were reserved for those unable to pay the proper compensation, who were consequently expelled from normative society.
The author and his newspaper editor were fined for defamation.
In some areas sheriffs were willing to hear defamation cases.
However, the evidence suggests that defamation dominated actions for injury throughout the period under consideration.
But the main courts with jurisdiction over defamation cases were local commissary courts.
Men, women, and couples were equally likely to have been accused of such things and to have responded by raising a legal action for defamation.
The fact that a defamation case was raised by someone accused of theft did not make them innocent.
This means that the defamations can be placed into distinct categories, and subdivided by gender.
There are also patriarchy, defamation suits in the church courts (plus a little on the courts' marital jurisdiction), religious communities and the poor.
Naturally, in the hands of detractors, his system of magic was fashioned into an instrument of defamation.
Scottish law, by contrast, did not require evidence of any particular harm caused by the defamation.
See all examples of defamation
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