Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A particle of dirt or soot.
  • noun A smudge made by soot, smoke, or dirt.
  • noun Sexually explicit or prurient language or material, such as books or movies.
  • noun Any of various plant diseases, especially of cereal grasses, caused by parasitic fungi chiefly of the class Ustilaginomycetes that form black powdery masses of spores on the affected parts.
  • noun A fungus causing such a disease.
  • intransitive verb To blacken or smudge, as with smoke or grime.
  • intransitive verb To affect (a plant) with smut.
  • intransitive verb To be or become blackened or smudged.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In leather manufacturing, to go over (the blacked side of a hide or skin) with a woolen cloth to remove dirt and improve the appearance of the blacking.
  • To stain or mark with smut; blacken with coal, soot, or other dirty substance.
  • To affect with the disease called smut; mildew.
  • Figuratively, to tarnish; defile; make impure; blacken.
  • To make obscene.
  • To gather smut; be converted into smut.
  • To give off smut; crock.
  • noun A spot made with soot, coal, or the like; also, the fouling matter itself.
  • noun Obscene or filthy language.
  • noun A fungous disease of plants, affecting especially the cereal plants, to many of which it is exceedingly destructive.
  • noun Earthy, worthless coal, such as is often found at the outcrop of a seam. In Pennsylvania also called black-dirt, blossom, and crop.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To gather smut; to be converted into smut; to become smutted.
  • intransitive verb To give off smut; to crock.
  • transitive verb To stain or mark with smut; to blacken with coal, soot, or other dirty substance.
  • transitive verb To taint with mildew, as grain.
  • transitive verb To blacken; to sully or taint; to tarnish.
  • transitive verb To clear of smut.
  • noun Foul matter, like soot or coal dust; also, a spot or soil made by such matter.
  • noun (Mining) Bad, soft coal, containing much earthy matter, found in the immediate locality of faults.
  • noun (Bot.) An affection of cereal grains producing a swelling which is at length resolved into a powdery sooty mass. It is caused by parasitic fungi of the genus Ustilago. Ustilago segetum, or U. Carbo, is the commonest kind; that of Indian corn is Ustilago maydis.
  • noun Obscene language; ribaldry; obscenity.
  • noun a machine for cleansing grain from smut.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable Soot.
  • noun uncountable Sexually vulgar material; something that is sexual in a dirty way; pornographic material.
  • noun derogatory A promiscuous, classless woman.
  • noun Any of a range of fungi, mostly Ustilaginomycetes, that cause plant disease in grasses, including cereal crops; the disease so caused.
  • verb To stain (or be stained) with soot etc.
  • verb intransitive To gather smut; to be converted into smut; to become smutted.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an offensive or indecent word or phrase
  • noun any fungus of the order Ustilaginales
  • noun creative activity (writing or pictures or films etc.) of no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate sexual desire
  • noun a black colloidal substance consisting wholly or principally of amorphous carbon and used to make pigments and ink
  • verb become affected with smut
  • verb affect with smut or mildew, as of a crop such as corn
  • noun destructive diseases of plants (especially cereal grasses) caused by fungi that produce black powdery masses of spores
  • verb make obscene
  • verb stain with a dirty substance, such as soot

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Middle English smotten, smutten, to defile.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Late Middle English, related to German verb schmutzen (to make dirty)

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Examples

Comments

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  • Does anyone recognise this WeirdNet definition ("a black colloidal substance consisting wholly or principally of amorphous carbon and used to make pigments and ink") as what they think of as smut?

    December 8, 2007

  • This page has more info WordNet definition of smut

    December 9, 2007

  • I like the verbal sense: "This line in the play smuts the entire act." Very compact.

    December 9, 2007

  • Madgitt's death and numbers obsessed son in Drowning by Numbers.

    January 15, 2008

  • 'I'm not going to stay here and be insulted.' He went. It was as if one had flicked a smut from one's lapel.

    - Peter Reading, C, 1984

    July 4, 2008