From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishtartar1 /tɑː $ tɑːr/ noun [uncountable] 1 TTRTBa black substance, thick and sticky when hot but hard when cold, used especially for making road surfaces → coal tar2 DFTa sticky substance that forms when tobacco burns, and that gets into the lungs of people who smoke high tar cigarettes
Examples from the Corpus
tar• Rating cigarettes by tar and nicotine content, much as gasoline is rated by octane levels.• A naked man covered in tar and soot slithered by in pursuit of three young, giggling girls.• The amount of tar in cigarettes is also important but less so than the number smoked or duration of smoking.• The clean smell of pine tar rose in the air, and Sam began counting rings.• His facial scars radiating ridges pigmented with tar or carbon pictured some many-legged mutant spider.tartar2 verb (tarred, tarring) [transitive] 1 TBTTRto cover a surface with tar a tarred roof2 → be/get tarred with the same brush3 → tar and feather→ See Verb tableExamples from the Corpus
tar• This is not an attempt to tar all forms of Centralism with the same brush.• Kleider has been tarred by recent business scandals.• Suspected abolitionists were tarred, feathered, and run out of town; antislavery literature was burned.• Candles and tarred kindling, and spices, Carrie thought, wrinkling her nose.• Ralph even tarred the roof gutters and fixed a leak by the chimney.• But he was tarred with Estabrook's guilt.• I was tarred with the same brush, to a certain extent.Origin tar1 Old English teoru 