smut – English noun declension

English noun forms of smut

Noun: smut
Singularsmut
Pluralsmuts

Sample Sentences

  • She reached it soon after half-past two. She found its gloomy nineteenth-century façade, black with the smuts of ninety years, a little daunting, and mounted its broad steps in some trepidation. But she rang the bell hard and knocked firmly. [1915, Edgar Jepson, “The Reluctant Duke”, in Happy Pollyooly: The Rich Little Poor Girl, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, page 135:]
  • “You can rely on me!” Varya said, still more earnestly and enthusiastically, still leaning heavily on the counter, noticing briefly and forgetting at once that her bare elbow had crushed a stray smut from the Primus mender's booth. [1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by Harry Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 56:]
  • “Do I have a smut on my nose, Mr. Donovan? You've been staring at me for a full minute. It's most disconcerting, you know.” [2012, Kasey Michaels, A Masquerade in the Moonlight:]
  • The semiology of smut remains fairly unchanging: pasties, thongs, fetishwear-lite, simulated masturbation with the most unlikely of objects. [2013 October 9, Suzanne Moore, “Sex is everywhere you look, but the semiology of smut never changes”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:]
  • It is no use to say, well, your anthrostate requires smut to be shielded, but your neighbor’s antrhostate^([sic]) says he can show anything anywhere. The neighbor’s behavior affects you, so you have to have the same rules. [2014 June 9, Hans Noel, “Polystate: A Not-So-Bad Book About a Very Bad Idea”, in Washington Monthly:]
  • He does not stand upon decency […] but will talk smut, though a priest and his mother be in the room. [2026 September 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “SUNDAY, May 25, 1711”, in The Spectator, number 39; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume I, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC:]
  • If the petals of your garden dianthus (pinks) are stained brown, they too are victims of similar smut. [2021 June 16, Phil Gates, “Country diary: in the fight to survive, red campion is a surprise battleground”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:]

Etymology

1. From Middle English smutten (“to defile, debase”), related to German Schmutz (“filth, dirt, smut”) and schmutzen (“to make dirty, stain”). Doublet of schmutz.
2. Compare also Old English smitta (“smear; blot; mark; stain; pollution”), Old English besmītan (“to besmut; defile; dirty; pollute; contaminate”). See: Old English Nouns 'smitta', Old English Nouns 'besmītan'.

Verbs referencing "smut"

German Nouns Schmutz, Dutch Nouns smet, English Nouns smirch, Swedish Nouns smuts.