black mark
7
5.8
- noun
- /blæk mɑrk/
:
marca negra
- The scandal left a black mark on his reputation that took years to overcome.
- black mark on your record
- black mark on your credit
- black mark on my name
It's a cultural black mark against your name that you would stoop to to support this.
- It's a cultural black mark against your name that you would stoop to to support this.
- And I think when I wrote that, certain people at GB News put a black mark against my name.
- But it was still quite a black mark.
- I, I mean, we have, I had people say, you know, you can't use the word black mark on reputation because it is racist, because it has the word black in it.
Examples
-
Don't let this be a black mark on an otherwise perfect record.
-
All he needed was one black mark on his record to discredit him with the Artemis folks.
Fiction book (2001) -
That was seen as like a black mark against him as a kid.
-
It's the main black mark on her story, a very large black mark.
-
Nobody would hire him with that kind of black mark on his record.
Blog text (24) -
I think that this is another black mark on the Oakland Police Department.
Blog text (1) -
Your claim and the way it is prosecuted are a black mark on American society.
Blog text (3) -
If Akin doesn't quit, it's a big black mark on him as well.
Blog text (15) -
The fact that the abolition of slavery in America cost 600,000 lives is a black mark in our history.
Blog text (15) -
Political repression is only one black mark on a Vietnamese human rights record that has been a point of contention with the United States.
Academic text (2000)
Synonyms
34
6.8
A mark on someone's reputation that makes others respect them less
9
4.7
An event that hurts how people see someone
5
8.8
A public mark that shows a person is shamed for a bad action
3
6.3
A mark that damages a person's reputation or record
1
5.3
An area people see as a weakness or cause of problems
A single event that harms a person or group's good reputation
Antonyms
How Damaging
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from 'black' (negative/dark, often metaphorically bad) + 'mark' (a sign or blemish), so a learner who knows both words can infer it denotes a negative sign against reputation. This color-as-valence + sign metaphor is common cross-linguistically and follows a regular compositional pattern, making it immediately comprehensible to B1 learners.
Etymology
Black mark comes from the image of a dark stain — a black mark — put on a paper record or list to show a mistake or bad behaviour. So a 'black mark' today means an event that makes people think less of someone.