What does "soot" mean?

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

What is a synonym for "soot"?

Common synonyms include: carbon black, lampblack, lampblack, air pollution, alluvion, alluvium.

Soot

//sʊt// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun

1
Fine black or dull brown particles of amorphous carbon and tar, produced by the incomplete combustion of coal, oil etc. uncountable, usually
2
a black colloidal substance consisting wholly or principally of amorphous carbon and used to make pigments and ink wordnet

Verb

1
To cover or dress with soot. transitive
"soot land"
2
coat with soot wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

carbon black lampblack lampblack air pollution alluvion alluvium

Example

More examples

"Eva climbed the stairs to Romer's office, trying to analyse the complex smell in the stairwell - a cross between mushrooms and soot, ancient stour and mildew, she decided."

Etymology

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”), 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)).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.