smut

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English

Etymology

From Middle English smutten (to defile, debase), related to German Schmutz (filth, dirt, smut) and schmutzen (to make dirty, stain).

Compare also Old English smitta (smear; blot; mark; stain; pollution), Old English besmītan (to besmut; defile; dirty; pollute; contaminate).

Pronunciation

Noun

smut (countable and uncountable, plural smuts)

  1. (uncountable) Soot.
  2. (countable) A flake of ash or soot.
    • 1915, Edgar Jepson, “The Reluctant Duke”, in Happy Pollyooly: The Rich Little Poor Girl, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, page 135:
      She reached it soon after half-past two. She found its gloomy nineteenth-century façade, black with the smuts of ninety years, a little daunting, and mounted its broad steps in some trepidation. But she rang the bell hard and knocked firmly.
    • 1989, H. T. Willetts (translator), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (author), August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 56:
      “You can rely on me!” Varya said, still more earnestly and enthusiastically, still leaning heavily on the counter, noticing briefly and forgetting at once that her bare elbow had crushed a stray smut from the Primus mender's booth.
    • 2012, Kasey Michaels, A Masquerade in the Moonlight:
      “Do I have a smut on my nose, Mr. Donovan? You've been staring at me for a full minute. It's most disconcerting, you know.”
  3. (uncountable) Sexually vulgar material; something that is sexual in a dirty way; pornographic material.
  4. (uncountable) Obscene language; ribaldry; obscenity.
    • Addison
      He does not stand upon decency [] but will talk smut, though a priest and his mother be in the room.
  5. (derogatory) A promiscuous woman.
  6. Any of a range of fungi, mostly Ustilaginomycetes, that cause plant disease in grasses, including cereal crops; the disease so caused.
  7. (mining) Bad, soft coal containing earthy matter, found in the immediate locality of faults.

Synonyms

  • (soot): filth
  • (sexually vulgar or pornographic material): filth
  • (promiscuous woman): slut

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

smut (third-person singular simple present smuts, present participle smutting, simple past and past participle smutted)

  1. (transitive, intransitive) To stain (or be stained) with soot or other dirt.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Mortimer to this entry?)
  2. (transitive) To taint (grain, etc.) with the smut fungus.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Francis Bacon to this entry?)
  3. (intransitive) To become tainted by the smut fungus.
    • 1836, New England Farmer (volume 14, page 313)
      It smutted to a far greater degree than the year before, say three fourths, or more. I obtained but little more than the seed sown, and that was handsome wheat. This failure I imputed to the same supposed cause which operated the last year.
  4. (transitive) To clear of the smut fungus.
    to smut grain for the mill

Anagrams


Irish

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun

smut m (genitive singular smuit, nominative plural smuit)

  1. stump; short piece; portion
  2. snout
  3. sulky expression, huff
  4. (zoology) rostrum

Declension

Synonyms

Derived terms

Verb

smut (present analytic smutann, future analytic smutfaidh, verbal noun smutadh, past participle smuta)

  1. (transitive) truncate, shorten
  2. Alternative form of smiot (hit, strike; smash; chip, chop; pare, whittle; fritter)

Conjugation

References