smut
pronunciation
How to pronounce smut in British English:
UK [smʌt]
How to pronounce smut in American English:
US [smʌt]
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- Noun:
- a black colloidal substance consisting wholly or principally of amorphous carbon and used to make pigments and ink
- destructive diseases of plants (especially cereal grasses) caused by fungi that produce black powdery masses of spores
- any fungus of the order Ustilaginales
- creative activity (writing or pictures or films etc.) of no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate sexual desire
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- Verb:
- make obscene
- stain with a dirty substance, such as soot
- become affected with smut
- affect with smut or mildew, as of a crop such as corn
Word Origin
- smut
- smut: [16] Smut is a member of a large but loosely-knit family of West Germanic words beginning with sm and ending in t or d that convey the general notion of ‘putting dirt on something’. Others include German schmutzen ‘get dirty’ and English smudge [15], and also English smite, which originally meant ‘smear’. Smut itself may have been borrowed from Low German smutt.=> smite, smudge
- smut (n.)
- 1660s, "black mark, stain," from verb smutten "debase, defile" (late 14c.), later "stain or mark with soot, etc." (1580s), cognate with Middle High German smotzen "make dirty," from West Germanic *smutt- (cognates: Middle High German smuz "grease, dirt;" German Schmutz "dirt," schmutzen "to make dirty"). The meaning "indecent or obscene language" is first attested 1660s.
Example
- 1. Advances on the resistance to head smut in maize .
- 2. Other army units wanted to send cattle-plague virus to wipe out the american livestock industry or grain smut to wipe out the crops .
- 3. After a day at work , I like to chop wood.you read smut .
- 4. Curious blogosphere yale posts imply online smut ?
- 5. Fungus causing green smut in rice .