soot
/suːt/ noun, verb
Forms soots sooting sooted
- noun Fine black or dull brown particles of amorphous carbon and tar, produced by the incomplete combustion of coal, oil etc.
- verb (transitive) To cover or dress with soot.
Synonyms
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English soot, soote, sote, sot, from Old English sōt, from Proto-Germanic *sōtą (“soot”), from Proto-Indo-European *sed- (“to sit”). Cognate with dated Dutch zoet (“soot”), German Low German Soot (“soot”), Danish sod (“soot”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish sot (“soot”), Icelandic sót (“soot”). Compare similar ō-grade formation the same Proto-Indo-European root in Old Irish suide (“soot”) and Balto-Slavic: Lithuanian súodžiai (“soot”), and Proto-Slavic *saďa (“soot”) (Russian са́жа (sáža), Polish and Slovak sadza, Bulgarian са́жда (sážda)).
Webster’s 1913
- noun A black substance formed by combustion, or disengaged from fuel in the process of combustion, which rises in fine particles, and adheres to the sides of the chimney or pipe conveying the smoke; strictly, the fine powder, consisting chiefly of carbon, which colors smoke, and which is the result of imperfect combustion. See Smoke.
- verb To cover or dress with soot; to smut with, or as with, soot; as, to soot land. Mortimer.
- adjective Sweet. [Obs.] "The soote savour of the vine." Chaucer.
Etymology [OE. sot, AS. s; akin to Icel. s, Sw. sot, Dan. sod, OD. soet, Lith. s; cf. Gael. suith, Ir. suth.]
Etymology [See Sweet.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “soot”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details