smut
Americannoun
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a particle of soot; sooty matter.
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a black or dirty mark; smudge.
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indecent language or publications; obscenity.
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Plant Pathology.
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a disease of plants, especially cereal grasses, characterized by the conversion of affected parts into black, powdery masses of spores, caused by fungi of the order Ustilaginales.
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a fungus causing this disease.
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verb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
noun
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a small dark smudge or stain, esp one caused by soot
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a speck of soot or dirt
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something obscene or indecent
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any of various fungal diseases of flowering plants, esp cereals, in which black sooty masses of spores cover the affected parts
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any parasitic basidiomycetous fungus of the order Ustilaginales that causes such a disease
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angling a minute midge or other insect relished by trout
verb
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to mark or become marked or smudged, as with soot
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to affect (grain) or (of grain) to be affected with smut
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(tr) to remove smut from (grain)
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(tr) to make obscene
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(intr) to emit soot or smut
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(intr) angling (of trout) to feed voraciously on smuts
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Any of various bacidiomycete fungi that are parasitic on plants and are distinguished by the black, powdery masses of spores that appear as sooty smudges on the affected plant parts. Smuts are parasitic chiefly on cereal grasses like corn and wheat and can cause enormous damage to crops.
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Any of the various plant diseases caused by smuts, such as corn smut.
Usage
What else does smut mean? Smut is obscene or pornographic material, including pictures and writing.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of smut
First recorded in 1580–90; akin to earlier smit ( Old English smitte ), by association with smudge, smutch
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Among the pet projects for the new guard was the library, which council members alleged was little better than a smut shop because the young adult section featured books about puberty and LGBTQ+ issues.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 28, 2025
To her million-plus Twitter followers, right-wing influencer Brigitte Gabriel groused, "Children should not be watching this smut!"
From Salon ● Dec. 18, 2023
He settled on using one from corn smut, a fungal pathogen.
From Science Magazine ● Apr. 18, 2023
Thursday’s announcement said Russia would “take all measures” to prevent contamination by wheat smut fungus and would suspend exports to China if it was found.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 24, 2022
Through endless blobs of ghostly black smoke he sped, the hanging smut wafting against the smooth plexiglass nose of the ship like an evil, damp, sooty vapor against his cheeks.
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
Fungal rusts and smuts that are proliferating in our increasingly warmer and wetter world endanger the world’s coffee supply.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 15, 2022
By the time of “Casanova,” Fellini had more or less forsaken actuality, with its risks and smuts, for the controllable universe of the studio—specifically, for the cavernous soundstages of Cinecittà, in Rome.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 17, 2020
In addition, the basidiomycota includes smuts and rusts, which are important plant pathogens, and toadstools.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2015
Some are parasitic, like the smuts that attack our crops.
From New York Times ● Jun. 23, 2010
He seemed not to notice, but remarked that the smuts in London were not quite so bad as they used to be when he was a student here.
From "Dracula" by Bram Stoker
Thumbnail Operas Long have composers wagged reproving fingers at the cinema, regarding it as a disorderly small boy whose grubby touch has too often smutted the dress of their lady, Music.
From Time Magazine Archive
Hilliard disapproved: "A picture a little shadowed may be borne withal for the rounding of it, but so greatly smutted or darkened as some use disgrace it, and is like truth ill told."
From Time Magazine Archive
Frances and Pratt were 169 scorched, and smutted from head to foot; and their throats were parched, too.
From Frances of the Ranges The Old Ranchman's Treasure by Marlowe, Amy Bell
The street before it might have been a second-rate New York, or, preferably, Boston, business street, except for a peculiarly London commonness in the smutted yellow brick and harsh red brick shops and public-houses.
From London Films by Howells, William Dean
He had caused more quarrels, smutted more characters, and created more ill-feeling between friends, neighbors and acquaintances, than all else beside in the community of Frogtown.
From The Humors of Falconbridge A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes by Falconbridge
Its mighty uncertain how long he will tarry; for lie-yers live by talking; turning of words upside down, and wrong side outards, and reading words backards, and whitewashing black things, and smutting of white ones.
From At the Mercy of Tiberius by Evans, Augusta J. (Augusta Jane)
To prevent the pots and kettles from smutting every thing they touch, each has a separate bag in which it is packed and carried.
From How to Camp Out by Gould, John Mead
It should seem also, that they sometimes heightened their black colour, by smutting their bodies; as a mark was left behind on any clean substance, such as white paper, when they handled it.
If I went up to dress, they would shoot into my collar-box, or amongst my clean shirts, smutting them all over.
From Humorous Readings and Recitations In prose and verse by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
