aspersion [LME] To engage in casting aspersions is almost literally mud-slinging. Aspersion originally meant ‘sprinkling water or other liquid on someone’, especially in baptism, and came from Latin spargere ‘to sprinkle’ (the root of disperse [LME] ‘scatter widely’, and intersperse [M16th] ‘sprinkle between’). Sprinkling a person with water developed into the idea of spattering them with something less pleasant, such as mud or dung. This in turn led to the notion of soiling a person’s reputation by making false and damaging insinuations against them. See also slur.