Word.ws English Dictionary

sooty

/ˈsʊti/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

dialectal/ˈsʌti/

sooty adjective: of, relating to, or producing soot.

Adjective

sooty (comparative sootier, superlative sootiest)

  1. Of, relating to, or producing soot.
    • Fire of sooty coal.1667, John Milton, “Book V”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...
    • The white faience façade, the glazed Doultonware Carrera marble, was made locally. And being glazed, it was impervious to London's sooty atmosphere, enabling easier cleaning.2023 December 13, Robin Leleux, “Restored... and a richly deserved award: Findlater's Corner”, in RAIL, number 998, page 43
  2. Soiled with soot
  3. Of the color of soot.
    • The grisly legions that troop under the sooty flag of Acheron.1634 October 9 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey...
  4. (literary, obsolete) Dark-skinned; black.
    • While thus reduced, his few surviving senses were at once called into acute activity by the appearance of a sooty little negro, who placed within his grasp a misshapen fold of dirty paper, […]1834, William Gilmore Simms, Guy Rivers: A tale of Georgia
    • Cæsar Pinkerton is a very respectable “gemman of colour;” […] [H]e aspired to have a wife. […] [H]e therefore paid a series of delicate attentions to Miss Feliciana Dusenberry, a sooty specimen of the fair sex.1835 April 14, “Police Scenes”, in York Gazette, volume XV, number 47, York, Pa.: [Adam] King & [Adam John] Glossbrenner, →OCLC, page [2], column 2
    Synonyms:
    black, dusky, inky, sable, swarthy

Verb

sooty (third-person singular simple present sooties, present participle sootying, simple past and past participle sootied)

  1. To blacken or make dirty with soot.
    • Sootied with noisome smoke.1614–1615, Homer, “(please specify the book number)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., Homer’s Odysses. […], London: […] Rich[ard] Field [and William Jaggard], for Nathaniell Butter, published 1615...

sooty meaning in Tamil and Persian

sooty in Tamil

புகையார்ந்த

sooty in Persian

of, relating to, or producing soot
دودناکی dudnâki

Synonyms of sooty

All synonyms of sooty

Forms of sooty

Adjective
comparativesootier
superlativesootiest
Verb
third-person singular presentsooties
present participlesootying
past participlesootied
pastsootied

Origin of sooty

From Middle English sooty, soty, equivalent to soot + -y. Probably influenced by similar Middle English suti (“dirty, filthy”), derived from the same root as Old English besūtian (“to befoul”).

Words formed from sooty

Phrases with sooty

Words that rhyme with sooty

Questions about sooty

What does sooty mean?
Sooty means of, relating to, or producing soot.
What is sooty in Tamil?
Sooty in Tamil is புகையார்ந்த. See Sooty meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is sooty?
Sooty can be an adjective or a verb.
How do you pronounce sooty?
Sooty is pronounced /ˈsʊti/.

Words near sooty in the dictionary

  1. sootlessness
  2. sootlike
  3. sootproof
  4. soots
  5. Sootses
  6. sooty
  7. sooty albatross
  8. sooty albatrosses
  9. sooty bark disease
  10. sooty blotch and flyspeck
  11. sooty grouse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sooty (page history and authors); sooty (Tamil Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sooty.wav.

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