noun
smut
smuht
noun
1
Sexually explicit or crude material, especially writing, images, or jokes.
"The magazine was mostly smut with a few articles thrown in."
2
A dark mark or smear of soot or dirt.
"A smut of coal dust covered the miner's face."
3
A fungal disease that blackens the grains of cereal crops.
"The wheat field was hit hard by smut this season."
How to Use Smut
Learner’s notesIn plain EnglishCrude, sexual content, or literally a smear of soot — the two senses share the idea of something "dirty."
When to use it
The "crude material" sense is informal and often used self-deprecatingly, e.g. describing racy fan fiction.
Common pairings
a bit of smut
covered in smut
Word Forms
smutted past tense, smuts plural, smuts singular
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Etymology
From Middle English smutten ("to defile, blacken"), related to German Schmutz ("dirt, filth").