Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A unit of measurement equal to five feet, seven inches (1.7018 meters), often cited when discussing the inherent arbitrariness of measurement units.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun UK A small opening built into a
dry-stone wall as abolthole allowing a person to cross the wall while impeding the livestock. - noun A
unit oflength defined as exactly sixty-seveninches (approximately 1.70meters ).
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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So a smoot is a Something - but what kind of something?
NPR Topics: News 2011
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A smoot is the height of a man - and not a man in the sense of men generally, or an average man, but
NPR Topics: News 2011
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Way back in 1958, the MIT chapter of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity used pledge Oliver R. Smoot to measure the Harvard Bridge in Massachusetts, coining the smoot as a unit of measurement in the process - one smoot equaling five feet, seven inches.
Neatorama 2009
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Category: julianne smoot, lea berman, meet the new boss, social secretary
Ah, so *that’s* why the new WH social secretary. | RedState 2010
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Hillary will bring all her dirt and smoot to the Obama – and changes the keys to the Oval office each chance she gets!!!
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He would sit before the family goddess, staring fixedly at a spot of smoot smeared in the exact centre of copper tray, soon fall into a trance.
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Most places have Postdoctoral Offices with committed admin to help smoot the process.
Archive 2007-03-01 The Eternal Postdoc 2007
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Most places have Postdoctoral Offices with committed admin to help smoot the process.
What I'm learning about Postdocs at Berkeley.. The Eternal Postdoc 2007
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For anyone who teaches at a university contracting with Safe Assignment's plagiarism-detection service, please note that those of us at USF have had several serious problems with the service in the past week, from the failures to pass off cookies smoot...
Plagiary 2006
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September 14th, 2008 at 3: 29 am PDT your views are web 0.01 we are currently moving on to web 3.0 dear reply smoot
Adobe’s Flash Not Good Enough for Steve Jobs Mark Hendrickson 2005
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I used to buy things there with sale prices scrawled on the tags, spending too much money on what I didn’t really want, then walk back across the MIT bridge, which was 364.4 “smoots” long (the height of Oliver R. Smoot, a 1958 frat pledge, plus or minus one ear).
Barneys Fantasia Adrienne Raphel 2022
stpeter commented on the word smoot
I learned this term from IBM Fellow Jerry Woodall, who went to school with Oliver Smoot at MIT. If I recall correctly, he may even have been involved in the original measurement process. :-)
December 28, 2006
colleen commented on the word smoot
A hole or opening at the foot of a wall, the bottom of a fence or hedge, etc., esp. one allowing the passage of hares, rabbits, or sheep; a narrow passage or entrance in a beehive.
-OED
August 19, 2007
trivet commented on the word smoot
Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered? ...raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone?
August 19, 2007
jennarenn commented on the word smoot
tinyfossil, that definition makes me SO happy. I just love quirks that are specific to a particular place. :)
August 19, 2007
pterodactyl commented on the word smoot
From Wikipedia: "The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length created as part of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) fraternity prank. It is named after Oliver R. Smoot (class of 1962), an MIT fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha, who in October 1958 was used by his fraternity brothers to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge between Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts... the bridge's length was measured to be 364.4 smoots (620.1 m) plus or minus one ear."
More here.
June 10, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word smoot
To me, this is a verb, and it means "fussing unnecessarily over plans, however inconsequential." The kind of behavior that makes other people on your work team want to say, "Dude! Chill!" even if they hate that type of speech.
I smoot daily.
June 10, 2008
Summerbythelakeside commented on the word smoot
According to Wikipedia, the smoot "is a nonstandard unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank. It is named after Oliver R. Smoot, a fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha, who in October 1958 lay on the Harvard Bridge (between Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts), and was used by his fraternity brothers to measure the length of the bridge." Sounds like fun.
September 2, 2009