smut
/smʌt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.87 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Sexually vulgar material; something that is sexual in a dirty way; pornographic material.
Uncountable
noun
Any of a range of fungi, mostly Ustilaginomycetes, that cause plant disease in grasses, including cereal crops; the disease so caused.
Countable; Uncountable
Example 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."
- "“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."
- "“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.”"
- "The semiology of smut remains fairly unchanging: pasties, thongs, fetishwear-lite, simulated masturbation with the most unlikely of objects."
- "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."
- "He does not stand upon decency […] but will talk smut, though a priest and his mother be in the room."
Etymology
From Middle English smutten (“to defile, debase”), related to German Schmutz (“filth, dirt, smut”) and schmutzen (“to make dirty, stain”). Doublet of schmutz. Compare also Old English smitta (“smear; blot; mark; stain; pollution”), Old English besmītan (“to besmut; defile; dirty; pollute; contaminate”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: smutten