smut
/smʌt
/noun
1A small flake of soot or other dirt or a mark left by one: all those black smuts from the engine...
- Acid smuts had damaged clothing hung out to dry in his garden and the paintwork of the plaintiff's car parked in the highway.
- On the tube, already doubly late, trying to get to King's Cross in time for the Intercity, I noticed in the squeeze a woman with a smut on her forehead.
2 [mass noun] A fungal disease of cereals in which parts of the ear change to black powder: a few bad crop years with smut and drought and frost [count noun]: fungal infections such as the smuts
- The fungi belong to Ustilago and other genera, order Ustilaginales, class Teliomycetes.
- The primary purpose of treating wheat seed is to protect it from the smut diseases with common bunt being the target disease this season.
- Therefore, a combination of an effective smut fungicide plus a fungicide effective against seedling blights is recommended.
3 [mass noun] Obscene or lascivious talk, writing, or pictures: porn, in his view, is far from being harmless smut...
- Since the first one appeared in 1964, there's been a debate about whether it's filth, smut, porn, tasteful erotica or high art.
- If some readers did not approve the Times of India which has pioneered smut and erotica in the Delhi Times (sometimes in the guise of sex education), it would not be the highest circulated English paper in the country.
- He has warned ‘cosmopolitan, liberal secular Jews’ of the fate they will suffer for assaulting Christianity with smut and pornography and the murder of the unborn.
verb (smuts, smutting, smutted) [with object] (often as adjective smutted)
1Mark with flakes or soot or other dirt: the smutted sky...
- Then Night came down like the feathery soot of a smoky lamp, and smutted first the bedquilt, then the hearth-rug, then the window-seat, and then at last the great, stormy, faraway outside world.
2Infect (a plant) with smut: smutted wheat...
- In the greenhouse test the number of plants showing smutted ears (on any of the tillers) after 3 months was recorded; in the field the percentage of smutted tillers was determined among 100-200 tillers sampled.
Origin
Late Middle English (in the sense 'defile, corrupt, make obscene'): related to German schmutzen; compare with smudge1. The noun dates from the mid 17th century.