Definitions

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

  • noun The fine black particles, chiefly composed of carbon, produced by incomplete combustion of coal, oil, wood, or other fuels.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To mark, cover, or treat with soot.
  • Middle English forms of sweet.
  • noun A black substance formed by combustion, or disengaged from fuel in the process of combustion, rising in fine particles and adhering to the sides of the chimney or pipe conveying the smoke.

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

  • 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.
  • adjective obsolete Sweet.
  • transitive verb To cover or dress with soot; to smut with, or as with, soot.

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

  • 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.

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

  • noun a black colloidal substance consisting wholly or principally of amorphous carbon and used to make pigments and ink
  • verb coat with soot

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old English sōt; see sed- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English sōt, from Proto-Germanic *sōtan (“soot”), a derivation of *sitjanan (whence also English sit). Cognate with Old Norse sót, Old Dutch soet and Middle Low German sōt. Compare similar ō-grade formation from the Proto-Indo-European *sed- (“sit”) in Old Irish suide ("soot") and Balto-Slavic: Lithuanian súodžiai ("soot"), and Proto-Slavic *sadja (“soot”) (Russian са́жа (sáža), Polish and Slovak sadza, Bulgarian са́жда (sážda)).

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