sooty
/ˈsʊti
/adjective (sootier, sootiest)
1Covered with or coloured like soot: his olive skin and sooty eyes...
- What's with this sooty blackness that covers my fruit at harvest?
- Of course, once they tried to get things out, the roof had collapsed in, covering everything in sooty ashes.
- For me now, it is the colour of grey, sooty, diesel-smelling exhaust smoke blowing in my face.
1.1Used in names of birds and other animals that are mainly blackish or brownish black, e.g. sooty tern.Got a few lifers for my bird list too, including greater and lesser frigate birds, sooty falcon and olive bee-eater....
- As the dinghy approaches the shores of North Avon Island, flocks of sooty and noddy terns swirl up and wheel above the dinghy, squawking loudly at our intrusion.
- On the cliffs above the colonies, we encountered nests of the light-mantled sooty albatross; on the plateau, huge wandering albatross chicks sat like white, fluffy lighthouses.
Derivatives
sootily
- Forget any ideas of Dick Van Dyke cavorting sootily on Victorian rooftops; chimney sweeping is a modern, regulated business with its own trade association and training courses.
- The movie is set in the harsh, sootily glamorous new Russian business world.
- I scaled the fence - one of the benefits of hoboing for 19 years is that barbed-wire fences look like screen doors - and sootily rode the predictable, comfortable Metro back to my apartment.
sootiness
- In this activity, biodiesel and some other fuels are tested and compared for sootiness and acidity.
- The high sootiness of the clay could be just a concentration effect, and the glass droplets made by algae.
- The sootiness on the bridge of his nose adds to the effect, as many silvers have similar facial masking.