Dictionary
Thesaurus
Reference
Translate
Web
Related Searches
on Ask.com
Synonyms
Nearby Entries
smoke - 13 dictionary results

smoke

  [smohk] noun, verb, smoked, smok⋅ing.
Use smoke in a Sentence
–noun
1. the visible vapor and gases given off by a burning or smoldering substance, esp. the gray, brown, or blackish mixture of gases and suspended carbon particles resulting from the combustion of wood, peat, coal, or other organic matter.
2. something resembling this, as vapor or mist, flying particles, etc.
3. something unsubstantial, evanescent, or without result: Their hopes and dreams proved to be smoke.
4. an obscuring condition: the smoke of controversy.
5. an act or spell of smoking something, esp. tobacco: They had a smoke during the intermission.
6. something for smoking, as a cigar or cigarette: This is the best smoke on the market.
7. Slang. marijuana.
8. Slang. a homemade drink consisting of denatured alcohol and water.
9. Physics, Chemistry. a system of solid particles suspended in a gaseous medium.
10. a bluish or brownish gray color.
–verb (used without object)
11. to give off or emit smoke, as in burning.
12. to give out smoke offensively or improperly, as a stove.
13. to send forth steam or vapor, dust, or the like.
14. to draw into the mouth and puff out the smoke of tobacco or the like, as from a pipe or cigarette.
15. Slang. to ride or travel with great speed.
16. Australian.
a. to flee.
b. to abscond.
–verb (used with object)
17. to draw into the mouth and puff out the smoke of: to smoke tobacco.
18. to use (a pipe, cigarette, etc.) in this process.
19. to expose to smoke.
20. to fumigate (rooms, furniture, etc.).
21. to cure (meat, fish, etc.) by exposure to smoke.
22. to color or darken by smoke.
—Verb phrase
23. smoke out,
a. to drive from a refuge by means of smoke.
b. to force into public view or knowledge; reveal: to smoke out the leaders of the spy ring.
—Idiom
24. go up or end in smoke, to terminate without producing a result; be unsuccessful: All our dreams went up in smoke.
Origin:
bef. 1000; (n.) ME; OE smoca; (v.) ME smoken, OE smocian

Related forms:
smokelike, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To smoke
smoke   (smōk)   
n.  
  1. The vaporous system made up of small particles of carbonaceous matter in the air, resulting mainly from the burning of organic material, such as wood or coal.
  2. A suspension of fine solid or liquid particles in a gaseous medium.
  3. A cloud of fine particles.
  4. Something insubstantial, unreal, or transitory.
    1. The act of smoking a form of tobacco: went out for a smoke.
    2. The duration of this act.
  6. Informal Tobacco in a form that can be smoked, especially a cigarette: money to buy smokes.
  7. A substance used in warfare to produce a smoke screen.
  8. Something used to conceal or obscure.
  9. A pale to grayish blue to bluish or dark gray.
v.   smoked, smok·ing, smokes

v.   intr.
    1. To draw in and exhale smoke from a cigarette, cigar, or pipe: It's forbidden to smoke here.
    2. To engage in smoking regularly or habitually: He smoked for years before stopping.
    3. To go or proceed at high speed.
    4. To play or perform energetically: The band was really smoking in the second set.
  2. To emit smoke or a smokelike substance: chimneys smoking in the cold air.
  3. To emit smoke excessively: The station wagon smoked even after the tune-up.
  4. Slang
    1. To go or proceed at high speed.
    2. To play or perform energetically: The band was really smoking in the second set.
v.   tr.
    1. To draw in and exhale the smoke of (tobacco, for example): I've never smoked a panatela.
    2. To do so regularly or habitually: I used to smoke filtered cigarettes.
    3. To fumigate (a house, for example).
    4. To expose (animals, especially insects) to smoke in order to immobilize or drive away.
  2. To preserve (meat or fish) by exposure to the aromatic smoke of burning hardwood, usually after pickling in salt or brine.
    1. To fumigate (a house, for example).
    2. To expose (animals, especially insects) to smoke in order to immobilize or drive away.
  4. To expose (glass) to smoke in order to darken or change its color.
  5. Slang To kill; murder.
Phrasal Verb(s):
smoke out
  1. To force out of a place of hiding or concealment by or as if by the use of smoke.
  2. To detect and bring to public view; expose or reveal: smoke out a scandal.

Idiom(s):
smoke and mirrorsSomething that deceives or distorts the truth: Your explanation is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

[Middle English, from Old English smoca.]
smok'a·ble, smoke'a·ble adj.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

Smoke

Smoke\, n. [AS. smoca, fr. sme['o]can to smoke; akin to LG. & D. smook smoke, Dan. sm["o]g, G. schmauch, and perh. to Gr. ??? to burn in a smoldering fire; cf. Lith. smaugti to choke.]

1. The visible exhalation, vapor, or substance that escapes, or expelled, from a burning body, especially from burning vegetable matter, as wood, coal, peat, or the like.

Note: The gases of hydrocarbons, raised to a red heat or thereabouts, without a mixture of air enough to produce combustion, disengage their carbon in a fine powder, forming smoke. The disengaged carbon when deposited on solid bodies is soot.

2. That which resembles smoke; a vapor; a mist.

3. Anything unsubstantial, as idle talk. --Shak.

4. The act of smoking, esp. of smoking tobacco; as, to have a smoke. [Colloq.]

Note: Smoke is sometimes joined with other word. forming self-explaining compounds; as, smoke-consuming, smoke-dried, smoke-stained, etc.

Smoke arch, the smoke box of a locomotive.

Smoke ball (Mil.), a ball or case containing a composition which, when it burns, sends forth thick smoke.

Smoke black, lampblack. [Obs.]

Smoke board, a board suspended before a fireplace to prevent the smoke from coming out into the room.

Smoke box, a chamber in a boiler, where the smoke, etc., from the furnace is collected before going out at the chimney.

Smoke sail (Naut.), a small sail in the lee of the galley stovepipe, to prevent the smoke from annoying people on deck.

Smoke tree (Bot.), a shrub (Rhus Cotinus) in which the flowers are mostly abortive and the panicles transformed into tangles of plumose pedicels looking like wreaths of smoke.

To end in smoke, to burned; hence, to be destroyed or ruined; figuratively, to come to nothing.

Syn: Fume; reek; vapor.

Smoke

Smoke\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Smoked; p. pr. & vb n. Smoking.] [AS. smocian; akin to D. smoken, G. schmauchen, Dan. sm["o]ge. See Smoke, n.]

1. To emit smoke; to throw off volatile matter in the form of vapor or exhalation; to reek.

Hard by a cottage chimney smokes. --Milton.

2. Hence, to burn; to be kindled; to rage.

The anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke agains. that man. --Deut. xxix. 20.

3. To raise a dust or smoke by rapid motion.

Proud of his steeds, he smokes along the field. --Dryden.

4. To draw into the mouth the smoke of tobacco burning in a pipe or in the form of a cigar, cigarette, etc.; to habitually use tobacco in this manner.

5. To suffer severely; to be punished.

Some of you shall smoke for it in Rome. --Shak.

Smoke

Smoke\, v. t. 1. To apply smoke to; to hang in smoke; to disinfect, to cure, etc., by smoke; as, to smoke or fumigate infected clothing; to smoke beef or hams for preservation.

2. To fill or scent with smoke; hence, to fill with incense; to perfume. "Smoking the temple." --Chaucer.

3. To smell out; to hunt out; to find out; to detect.

I alone Smoked his true person, talked with him. --Chapman.

He was first smoked by the old Lord Lafeu. --Shak.

Upon that . . . I began to smoke that they were a parcel of mummers. --Addison.

4. To ridicule to the face; to quiz. [Old Slang]

5. To inhale and puff out the smoke of, as tobacco; to burn or use in smoking; as, to smoke a pipe or a cigar.

6. To subject to the operation of smoke, for the purpose of annoying or driving out; -- often with out; as, to smoke a woodchuck out of his burrow.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
Cite This Source
Language Translation for : smoke
Spanish: humo,
German: der Rauch,
Japanese: 煙
More Translations »

smoke

vi.
1. To crash or blow up, usually spectacularly. "The new version smoked, just like the last one." Used for both hardware (where it often describes an actual physical event), and software (where it's merely colorful).
2. [from automotive slang] To be conspicuously fast. "That processor really smokes." Compare magic smoke.
Jargon File 4.2.0
Cite This Source

smoke  (n.1)
late O.E. smoca, related to smeocan "give off smoke," from P.Gmc. *smeukanan (cf. M.Du. smooc, Du. smook, M.H.G. smouch, Ger. Schmauch), from PIE base *smeug(h)- "to smoke" (cf. Arm. mux "smoke," Gk. smykhein "to burn with smoldering flame," O.Ir. much, Welsh mwg "smoke"). Smokestack is from 1862; smoke-eater "firefighter" is c.1930. Phrase go up in smoke "be destroyed" is from 1933. smoke alarm first attested 1936.

smoke  (v.)
O.E. smocian "to produce smoke," see smoke (n.). Meaning "to drive out or away or into the open by means of smoke" is attested from 1593. Meaning "to cure (bacon, fish, etc.) by exposure to smoke" is first attested 1599. In connection with tobacco, the verb is first recorded 1604 in James I's "Counterblast to Tobacco." Smoking gun in figurative sense of "incontestable evidence" is from 1974.

smoke  (n.2)
"cigarette," slang, 1882, from smoke (n.1). Also "opium" (1884). Meaning "a spell of smoking tobacco" is recorded from 1835.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
Cite This Source

Main Entry: smoke
Pronunciation: 'smOk
Function: verb
Inflected Forms: smoked; smok·ing
intransitive senses
: to inhaleand exhale the fumes of burning plant material and especially tobacco; especially : to smoke tobacco habitually smoke transitive senses
: to inhale and exhalethe smoke of <smoked 30 cigarettes a day>
Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc.
Cite This Source
smoke   (smōk)  Pronunciation Key 
A mixture of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other gases, usually containing particles of soot or other solids, produced by the burning of carbon-containing materials such as wood and coal.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

smoke
1. To crash or blow up, usually spectacularly. "The new version smoked, just like the last one." Used for both hardware (where it often describes an actual physical event), and software (where it's merely colourful).
2. [Automotive slang] To be conspicuously fast. "That processor really smokes." Compare magic smoke.
[The Jargon File]

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
Cite This Source

smoke

In addition to the idiom beginning with smoke, also see chain smoker; go up in flames (smoke); holy cow (smoke); no smoke without fire; watch one's dust (smoke).

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
Cite This Source
Search another word or see smoke on Thesaurus | Reference