smut

noun

1. (uncountable)Soot.
2. (countable)A flake of ash or soot.

   “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.””

3. (uncountable)Sexually vulgar material; something that is sexual in a dirty way; pornographic material.

   “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.”

4. (uncountable)Obscene language; ribaldry; obscenity.

   “He does not stand upon decency […] but will talk smut, though a priest and his mother be in the room.”

5. (countable, uncountable)Any of a range of fungi, mostly Ustilaginomycetes, that cause plant disease in grasses, including cereal crops; the disease so caused.

   “If the petals of your garden dianthus (pinks) are stained brown, they too are victims of similar smut.”

6. (countable, uncountable)Bad, soft coal containing earthy matter, found in the immediate locality of faults.
7. (archaic, countable, slang)A copper boiler.

verb

1. (ambitransitive)To stain (or be stained) with soot or other dirt.

   “it bears a very good Crop , and seldom smuts”

   “But the Nis did not forget it to the maids; for the following Sunday when they were going to the dance, be contrived, unknown to them, to smut their faces all over, so that when they got up to dance, every one that was there burst out a laughing at them.”

2. (transitive)To taint (grain, etc.) with the smut fungus.

   “Mildew also falls upon Corn, and smuts it”

3. (intransitive)To become tainted by the smut fungus.

   “It smutted to a far greater degree than the year before, say three fourths, or more. I obtained but little more than the seed sown, and that was handsome wheat. This failure I imputed to the same supposed cause which operated the last year.”

4. (transitive)To clear of the smut fungus.

   “to smut grain for the mill”