soot

«soot» in Mova's school dictionary: the black powder that smoke leaves behind when wood… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (soot, uncountable)

meaning for a pupil

1) Soot is the black powder that smoke leaves behind when wood, coal, oil or candles burn. tree →

2) Soot collects inside chimneys, on walls near fires and on cooking pots. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science lessons about burning and pollution, soot is made of tiny bits of carbon in smoke and can harm lungs. In history, children called chimney sweeps once climbed chimneys to clean out soot. In stories, faces and clothes are black with soot after a fire.

examples

• The chimney was full of soot. tree →
• His face was black with soot after cleaning the fireplace. tree →
• Candle smoke left soot on the ceiling. tree →
• Long ago, children swept soot out of chimneys. tree →
• Soot in the air is bad for our lungs. tree →
• The firefighters came out covered in soot. tree →
• We wiped the soot off the old kettle. tree →
• And when the soot and ashes had been washed from her face, she looked more beautiful than anyone in the world. tree →

note

Uncountable: «some soot», never «a soot». Pronounced to rhyme with «foot» (in many places) — not «suit». Adjective: «sooty». Soot is mostly carbon; a lot of soot in a chimney can catch fire, so chimneys need sweeping.

In the corpora

• Many moths rest still on trees looking like bark, and when factory soot darkened trees, dark moths survived better than pale ones.
• A flame is glowing hot gas; its yellow light comes from tiny specks of hot soot.
• Burning coal and oil also pollutes the air with soot and gases that cause millions of early deaths each year.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «soot» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.