Added 9 October 2026
soot
/suːt/ noun
In Latin: fūlīgō, favillula Wiktionary
noun Definition from WordNet 3.1, Princeton University. Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about soot at Wordnik → Where our words come from →
- A black colloidal substance consisting wholly or principally of amorphous carbon and used to make pigments and ink.
verb
- Coat with soot.
Origin
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)).
From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)