soot

/suːt/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northern Ireland/sʉt/

soot noun: fine black or dull brown particles of amorphous carbon and tar, produced by the incomplete combustion of coal, oil etc.

Image: EPA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

soot (usually uncountable, plural soots)

(usually) Fine black or dull brown particles of amorphous carbon and tar, produced by the incomplete combustion of coal, oil etc.

Synonyms:

lampblack

Verb

soot (third-person singular simple present soots, present participle sooting, simple past and past participle sooted)

(transitive) To cover or dress with soot.
- soot land1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. […], London: […] J[ohn] H[umphreys] for H[enry] Mortlock […], and J[onathan] Robinson […], →OCLC

soot meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Bengali and Malayalam

soot in Tamil

புகைக்கரி, விளக்குக்கரி, சுடர்க்கரி, புகைக் கரி, ஆழ்நிலைத் தூக்க ஊக்கி

soot in Marathi

fine black or dull brown particles: काजळी kājḷī

soot in Malayalam

പുകപ്പൊടി, മഷി, പുകയറ

More languagesFewer languages

soot in Kannada: ಮಸಿ, ಮಕ್ಕು, ಇಲ್ಲಣ, ಇಲ್ಲಾರ
soot in Sanskrit: मषि maṣi
soot in Tagalog: uling-aso
soot in Arabic: سُخَام suḵām
soot in Malay: jelaga, sulang, sulang asap, arang pagu
soot in Thai: เขม่า kà-mào
soot in Vietnamese: lọ, nghẹ, muội, nhọ
soot in Myanmar: ကျပ်ခိုး kyaphkui:

Examples of soot in a sentence

The chimney won’t draw properly if it’s clogged up with soot.
Underneath all that soot, dirt and grime is the true beauty of the church in soft shades of sandstone.
His coat was sooted from sliding down the chimney.

All 22 example sentences with soot

Synonyms of soot

lampblack

Forms of soot

Noun
plural	soots
Verb
third-person singular present	soots
present participle	sooting
past participle	sooted
past	sooted

Plural of soot: soots

Origin of soot

Inherited from Middle English soot, soote, sote, sot, from Old English sōt, from Proto-Germanic *sōtą (“soot”), from Proto-Indo-European *sed- (“to sit”). Cognate with dated Dutch zoet (“soot”), German Low German Soot (“soot”), Danish sod (“soot”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish sot (“soot”), Icelandic sót (“soot”). Compare similar ō-grade formation the same Proto-Indo-European root in Old Irish suide (“soot”) and Balto-Slavic: Lithuanian súodžiai (“soot”), and Proto-Slavic *saďa (“soot”) (Russian са́жа (sáža), Polish and Slovak sadza, Bulgarian са́жда (sážda)).

Words formed from soot

Phrases with soot

Words that rhyme with soot

Questions about soot

What does soot mean?: Soot means fine black or dull brown particles of amorphous carbon and tar, produced by the incomplete combustion of coal, oil etc.
What is soot in Tamil?: Soot in Tamil is புகைக்கரி, விளக்குக்கரி, சுடர்க்கரி. See Soot meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is soot?: Soot can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce soot?: Soot is pronounced /suːt/.
What is the plural of soot?: The plural of soot is soots.

Words near soot in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: soot (page history and authors); soot (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); soot (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); soot (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); soot (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); मषि (Sanskrit) (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-soot.ogg.

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