smelt

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To melt or fuse (ores) in order to separate the metallic constituents.
2. v. To melt or fuse. Used of ores.
3. n. Any of various small silvery marine and freshwater food fishes of the family Osmeridae, found in cold waters of the Northern Hemisphere, especially Osmerus mordax of North America and O. eperlanus of Europe.
4. v. A past tense and a past participle of smell.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To fuse; melt; specifically, to treat (ore) in the large way, and chiefly in a furnace or by the aid of heat, for the purpose of separating the contained metal. Metallurgical operations carried on in the moist way, as the amalgamation of gold and silver ores in pans, treatment by lixiviation, etc., are not generally designated by the term smelting. Establishments where this is done are more commonly called mills or reduction-works, and those in which iron is smelted are usually designated as blast-furnaces or iron-furnaces. The various smelting operations differ greatly from each other, according to the nature of the combinations operated on. Simple ores, like galena, require only a very simple series of operations, which are essentially continuous in one and the same furnace; more complicated combinations, like the mixtures of various cupriferous ores smelted at Swansea by the English method, require several successive operations, entirely disconnected from each other, and performed in different furnaces. In the most general way, the essential order of succession of the various processes by which the sulphureted ores (and most ores are sulphurets) are treated is as follows:
2. To fuse; melt; dissolve.
3. n. Any one of various small fishes. A small fish of the family Argentinidæ and the genus Osmerus, The common European smelt is the sparling, O. eperlanus; it becomes about 10 to 12 inches long, and is of an olive-green above and a silvery white below, with a silver longitudinal lateral band. It exhales when fresh a peculiar scent suggesting the cucumber. This fish is prized as a delicacy. The corresponding American smelt is O. mordax, of the Atlantic coast from Virginia northward, anadromous to some extent, and otherwise very similar to the sparling. There are several true smelts of the Pacific coast of North America, as O. thaleichthys, the Californian smelts and O. dentex, the Alaska smelt.
4. n. A gull; a simpleton.

Wiktionary

1. n. a family of small anadromous fish common in the North American Great Lakes
2. n. Production of metal from ore; or, any of the various liquids or semi-molten solids produced and used during the course of such production.
3. v. simple past tense and past participle of smell.
4. v. to fuse two things into one, especially when involving ores; to meld

GNU Webster's 1913

1. imp. & p. p. of smell.
2. n. Any one of numerous species of small silvery salmonoid fishes of the genus Osmerus and allied genera, which ascend rivers to spawn, and sometimes become landlocked in lakes. They are esteemed as food, and have a peculiar odor and taste.
3. n. A gull; a simpleton.
4. v. To melt or fuse, as, ore, for the purpose of separating and refining the metal; hence, to reduce; to refine; to flux or scorify.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. small cold-water silvery fish; migrate between salt and fresh water
2. v. extract (metals) by heating
3. n. small trout-like silvery marine or freshwater food fishes of cold northern waters