Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The vaporous system made up of small particles of carbonaceous matter in the air, resulting mainly from the burning of organic material, such as wood or coal.
  • noun A suspension of fine solid or liquid particles in a gaseous medium.
  • noun A cloud of fine particles.
  • noun Something insubstantial, unreal, or transitory.
  • noun The act of smoking a form of tobacco.
  • noun The duration of this act.
  • noun Informal Tobacco in a form that can be smoked, especially a cigarette.
  • noun A substance used in warfare to produce a smoke screen.
  • noun Something used to conceal or obscure.
  • noun A pale to grayish blue to bluish or dark gray.
  • noun Baseball Pitches thrown at high velocity; fast balls.
  • intransitive verb To draw in and exhale smoke from a cigarette, cigar, or pipe.
  • intransitive verb To engage in smoking regularly or habitually.
  • intransitive verb To emit smoke or a smokelike substance.
  • intransitive verb To emit smoke excessively.
  • intransitive verb To go or proceed at high speed.
  • intransitive verb To play or perform energetically.
  • intransitive verb To draw in and exhale the smoke of (tobacco, for example).
  • intransitive verb To do so regularly or habitually.
  • intransitive verb To preserve (meat or fish) by exposure to the aromatic smoke of burning hardwood, usually after pickling in salt or brine.
  • intransitive verb To fumigate (a house, for example).
  • intransitive verb To expose (animals, especially insects) to smoke in order to immobilize or drive away.
  • intransitive verb To expose (glass) to smoke in order to darken or change its color.
  • intransitive verb To kill; murder.
  • intransitive verb To defeat decisively, as in a competition.
  • intransitive verb Baseball To throw (a pitch) at high velocity.
  • idiom (smoke and mirrors) Something that deceives or distorts the truth.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To emit smoke; throw off volatile matter in the form of vapor or exhalation; reek; fume; especially, to send off visible vapor as the product of combustion.
  • To burn; be kindled; rage; fume.
  • To raise a dust or smoke by rapid motion.
  • To smell or hunt something out; suspect something; perceive a hidden fact or meaning.
  • To permit the passage of smoke outward instead of drawing it upward; send out smoke for want of sufficient draft: said of chimneys, stoves, etc.
  • To draw fumes of burning tobacco, opium, or the like, into, and emit them from, the mouth; use tobacco or opium in this manner.
  • To suffer as from overwork or hard treatment; be punished.
  • To emit dust, as when beaten.
  • To apply smoke to; blacken with smoke; hang in smoke; medicate or dry by smoke; fumigate: as, to smoke infected clothing; to subject to the action of smoke, as meat; cure by means of smoke; smoke-dry; also, to incense.
  • To affect in some way with smoke; especially, to drive or expel by smoke: generally with out; also, to destroy or kill, as bees, by smoke.
  • To draw smoke from into the mouth and puff it out; also, to burn or use in smoking; inhale the smoke of: as, to smoke tobacco or opium; to smoke a pipe or a cigar.
  • To smell out; find out; scent; perceive; perceive the meaning of; suspect.
  • To sneer at; quiz; ridicule to one's face.
  • To raise dust from by beating; “dust”: as, I'll smoke his jacket for him.
  • noun The exhalation, visible vapor, or material that escapes or is expelled from a burning substance during combustion: applied especially to the volatile matter expelled from wood, coal, peat, etc., together with the solid matter which is carried off in suspension with it, that expelled from metallic substances being more generally called fume or fumes.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English smoca.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English smoke, from Old English smoca ("smoke"), probably a derivative of the verb smocian ("to smoke, emit smoke; fumigate"), from Proto-Germanic *smukōnan (“to smoke”), ablaut derivative of Proto-Germanic *smeukanan (“to smoke”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)meug(h)- (“to smoke”). Related to Old English smēocan ("to smoke, emit smoke; fumigate"), Dutch smook ("smoke"), Middle Low German smōk ("smoke"), German dialectal Schmauch ("smoke"), Bavarian schmuckelen ("to smell bad, reek").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word smoke.

Examples

  • The suffering man ought really 'to consume his own smoke;' there is no good in emitting _smoke_ till you have made it into _fire_, -- which, in the metaphorical sense too, all smoke is capable of becoming!

    Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History Thomas Carlyle 1838

  • Lately, the term "smoke and mirrors" has come up when looking back on Buffalo's 4-1 start.

    NYT > Home Page By ANDY BENOIT 2011

  • Lately, the term "smoke and mirrors" has come up when looking back on Buffalo's 4-1 start.

    NYT > Home Page By ANDY BENOIT 2011

  • “Would it kill you to just use the word smoke bomb?”

    Hardy Boys Haunted Franklin W. Dixon 2008

  • “Would it kill you to just use the word smoke bomb?”

    Hardy Boys Haunted Franklin W. Dixon 2008

  • “Would it kill you to just use the word smoke bomb?”

    Hardy Boys Haunted Franklin W. Dixon 2008

  • “Would it kill you to just use the word smoke bomb?”

    Hardy Boys Haunted Franklin W. Dixon 2008

  • “Would it kill you to just use the word smoke bomb?”

    Hardy Boys Haunted Franklin W. Dixon 2008

  • According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Jerry Dearly of the Lakota nation spread sweet, thin smoke from a "bear root" incense held in a shell over the playing surface.

    USATODAY.com 2002

  • Dust might be defined as smoke which had settled, and the term smoke applied to solid particles still suspended in the air.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 Various

  • By mid-century, more than 82 million people in the US, 25% of the population, are likely to experience repeated “smoke waves,” at least two consecutive days with high levels of PM 2.5, a particularly dangerous form of tiny air pollution particulates, according to researchers in the journal Climatic Change. 

    How to breathe easier in America’s Smoke Belt The A.V. Club 2022

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • "'Because we're sort of in a bit of a dip, we couldn't see off into the distance, we couldn't see the flame, it was just smoke everywhere.'

    Sue's 14-year-old son helped fight the fire. It was only after the event that Sue realised how scared he might have been.

    'He didn't show any sign of fear at the time during the actual fire, but he did say to me afterwards that he went inside and hid under his sheets because he felt safe in there and I felt he went into himself a little bit from then,' she said."

    - Children of the bushfires face emotional recovery, abc.net.au, 10 Feb 2009.

    February 10, 2009