smut

From Middle English smutten (“to defile, debase”), related to German Schmutz (“filth, dirt, smut”) and schmutzen (“to make dirty, stain”). This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term. Doublet of schmutz.

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

• IPA^(key): /smʌt/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• (Northern England) IPA^(key): /smʊt/}
• Rhymes: -ʌt

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, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by Harry Willetts, 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.
   • 1711 June 5 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “FRIDAY, May 25, 1711”, in The Spectator, number 39; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume I, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC:

     He does not stand upon decency […] but will talk smut, though a priest and his mother be in the room.

     The spelling has been modernized.

5. Any of a range of fungi, mostly Ustilaginomycetes, that cause plant disease in grasses, including cereal crops; the disease so caused.
6. (mining) Bad, soft coal containing earthy matter, found in the immediate locality of faults.
7. (countable, slang, archaic) A copper boiler.

• (soot): filth
• (sexually vulgar or pornographic material): filth

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.
   • 1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. […], 2nd edition, London: […] J[ohn] H[umphreys] for H[enry] Mortlock […], and J[onathan] Robinson […], published 1708, →OCLC:

     it bears a very good Crop , and seldom smuts

   • 1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 231:

     But the Nis did not forget it to the maids; for the following Sunday when they were going to the dance, be contrived, unknown to them, to smut their faces all over, so that when they got up to dance, every one that was there burst out a laughing at them.

2. (transitive) To taint (grain, etc.) with the smut fungus.
   • 1631, Francis [Bacon], “(please specify |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], 3rd edition, London: […] William Rawley; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC:

     Mildew also falls upon Corn, and smuts it

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

• MTUs, UMTS, must, stum, tums

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

• IPA^(key): /ˈsˠmˠʊt̪ˠ/

smut m (genitive singular smuit, nominative plural smuit)

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

• (rostrum): rostram

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”)

• Ó Dónaill, Niall (1977) “smut”, in Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla, Dublin: An Gúm, →ISBN