smut - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

corn smut (noun sense 5)

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

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

smut (countable and uncountable, plural smuts)

  1. (uncountable) Soot.
    Synonym: filth
  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.
    Synonym: filth
    • 2013 October 9, Suzanne Moore, “Sex is everywhere you look, but the semiology of smut never changes”, in The Guardian‎[1], →ISSN:
      The semiology of smut remains fairly unchanging: pasties, thongs, fetishwear-lite, simulated masturbation with the most unlikely of objects.
    • 2014 June 9, Hans Noel, “Polystate: A Not-So-Bad Book About a Very Bad Idea”, in Washington Monthly‎[2]:
      It is no use to say, well, your anthrostate requires smut to be shielded, but your neighbor’s antrhostate[_sic_] says he can show anything anywhere. The neighbor’s behavior affects you, so you have to have the same rules.
  4. (uncountable) Obscene language; ribaldry; obscenity.
  5. (phytopathology) Any of a range of fungi, mostly Ustilaginomycetes, that cause plant disease in grasses, including cereal crops; the disease so caused.
    • 2021 June 16, Phil Gates, “Country diary: in the fight to survive, red campion is a surprise battleground”, in The Guardian‎[3], →ISSN:
      If the petals of your garden dianthus (pinks) are stained brown, they too are victims of similar smut.
  6. (mining) Bad, soft coal containing earthy matter, found in the immediate locality of faults.
  7. (countable, slang, archaic) A copper boiler.

sexually vulgar or pornographic material

range of fungi

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

  1. (ambitransitive) To stain (or be stained) with soot or other dirt.
    Synonyms: befoul, smutch, smutty, soil; see also Thesaurus:dirty
    • 1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. […], London: […] J[ohn] H[umphreys] for H[enry] Mortlock […], and J[onathan] Robinson […], →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.
    • 1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], 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

See smutte.

smut n (singular definite smuttet, plural indefinite **smut)

  1. a quick or spontaneous trip, visit, stay or errand etc.
    Synonyms: sviptur, smuttur

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

smut m (genitive singular smuit, nominative plural smuit)

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