Word.ws English Dictionary

chimbley

/ˈt͡ʃɪmbli/

chimbley is the alternative form of chimney.

Meaning of chimney

Noun

chimney (plural chimneys or (archaic) chimnies)

  1. A vertical tube or hollow column used to emit environmentally polluting gaseous and solid matter (including but not limited to by-products of burning carbon- or hydrocarbon-based fuels); a flue.
    • Our chimney was a square hole in the roof: it was but a little part of the smoke that found its way out, and the rest eddied about the house, and kept us coughing and piping the eye.1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    lum
  2. The glass flue surrounding the flame of an oil lamp.
    • By next winter he was spending every evening poring over the work of Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné on the French Reformation by the light of a little oil lamp, with a tiny cistern the size of an orange and no chimney[.]1977, K.M. Elizabeth Murray, Caught in the Web of Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 22
  3. (UK) The smokestack of a steam locomotive.
  4. A narrow cleft in a rock face; a narrow vertical cave passage.
  5. (euphemistic, vulgar) A vagina.
  6. (Northern Ireland, slang) A black eye; a shiner.

See all 7 meanings of chimney

Forms of chimbley

pluralchimbleys
alternative formchimley
alternative formchimbly

Origin of chimbley

By dissimilation of mn to ml, followed by epenthesis of b

Questions about chimbley

What is chimbley the alternative form of?
Chimbley is the alternative form of chimney.
How do you pronounce chimbley?
Chimbley is pronounced /ˈt͡ʃɪmbli/.

Words near chimbley in the dictionary

  1. Chimay
  2. Chimayo
  3. Chimayó
  4. chimb
  5. Chimbarongo
  6. chimbley
  7. chimbleys
  8. chimblies
  9. chimblins
  10. chimbly
  11. Chimborazo

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chimbley (page history and authors); chimney (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “chimbley.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chimbley. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.