Chimney
noun, verb, slang ·2 syllables ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 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."
- 2 a vertical flue that provides a path through which smoke from a fire is carried away through the wall or roof of a building wordnet
- 3 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[.]"
- 4 a glass flue surrounding the wick of an oil lamp wordnet
- 5 The smokestack of a steam locomotive. British
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- 6 A narrow cleft in a rock face; a narrow vertical cave passage.
- 7 A vagina. euphemistic, vulgar
- 8 A black eye; a shiner. Northern-Ireland, slang
- 1 To negotiate a chimney (narrow vertical cave passage) by pushing against the sides with back, feet, hands, etc.
Example
More examples"A chimney carries smoke from a fireplace to the outside."
Etymology
From Middle English chymeneye, chymneye, chymene, from Old French cheminee, from Late Latin camīnāta, from Latin camīnus, from Ancient Greek κάμῑνος (kámīnos, “furnace”). Doublet of chimenea.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.