Sooty

a. Forms: 3 soti, 3, 5 soty, 4– sooty, 6–8 sootie; 5 soyty, sutty, 6 swuttie. [f. SOOT a. + -Y. Cf. ON. and Icel. sótigr, sótugr, MSw. sotogher, Sw. sotig.

  It is difficult to regard the early south-western suti SUTY a. as a mere variant of this.]

  1.  Foul or dirty with soot; covered or smeared with soot; full of soot.

a. 1250.  Owl & Night., 578. Þu art dim, an of fule howe, An þinchest a lutel soti [v.r. soty] clowe.

c. 1386.  Chaucer, Nun’s Pr. T., 12. Ful sooty was hir bour, and eek hir halle.

a. 1400.  Octavian, 800. Clement broghte forthe schelde and spere,… Soyty [v.r. sutty] and alle vnclene.

c. 1440.  Promp. Parv., 465/2. Soty, or fowlyd wythe soot, fuliginosus.

1530.  Palsgr., 325/1. Sooty, full of sowte as a chymnay is, suyeux.

1599.  Nashe, Lenten Stuffe, Wks. (Grosart), V. 275. Hee … hung the residue … in the sooty roofe of his shad a drying.

1625.  K. Long, trans. Barclay’s Argenis, II. xxii. 143. They are still smokie and sootie and in all their colour shew they come from the fire.

1675.  Hobbes, Odyssey (1677), 301. Till from above In thunder Jove his sooty bolt down threw.

1700.  T. Brown, trans. Fresny’s Amusem. Ser. & Com., 21. Here a Sooty Chimney-Sweeper takes the Wall of a Grave Alderman.

1773.  J. Berridge, Wks. (1864), 96. His own sooty cap is full as good as your rusty bonnet.

1818.  Scott, Br. Lamm., xviii. He found that faithful servitor in his sooty and ruinous den.

1895.  G. Meredith, Amazing Marriage, viii. When the wind puffs down a sooty chimney the air is filled with little blacks.

  transf.  1740.  Somerville, Hobbinol, II. (1749), 133. The furious God In sooty Triumph rides dreadful.

1872.  Tennyson, Gareth & Lynette, 469. So Gareth … underwent The sooty yoke of kitchen vassalage.

1878.  Hare, Walks in Lond., I. iv. 128. St. Paul’s Cathedral … has a peculiar sooty dignity all its own.

  b.  Of the soul: Foul with sin.

1655.  Fuller, Serm., Best Act Obliv., 5. How could David’s soule in his youth be sooty with sinne?

1680.  C. Nesse, Church Hist., 254. The sooty souls of those nobles … under their white garments.

  c.  Of grain: Affected by smut; blackened.

1697.  Dryden, Virg. Past., X. 113/48. From Juniper, unwholsom Dews distill, That blast the sooty Corn.

  2.  Resembling soot in color; dusky or brownish black.

1593.  Nashe, Christ’s T., 61 b. The blacke swuttie visage of the night.

1602.  Marston, Antonio’s Rev., III. v. G. Yee sootie coursers of the night.

1640.  Quarles, Sighs, ii. Wks. (Grosart), III. 39. Do’st thou think To glorifie thy Skill In Sooty Characters of Inke?

1766.  Sterne, in Scoones, Four C. Eng. Lett. (1880), 249. From the fairest face about St. James’s to the sootiest complexion in Africa.

1776.  Addison’s Spect., No. 412, ¶ 5. The black-bird hence selects her sooty spouse.

1817.  Byron, Beppo, xviii. Not like that sooty devil of Othello’s.

1839.  Lindley, Introd. Bot. (ed. 3), 478. Sooty..., dirty brown, verging upon black.

1845.  Gosse, Ocean, iv. (1849), 164. Their sooty wings horizontally extended.

  b.  fig. or in fig context. Black, dismal.

1657.  R. Ligon, Barbadoes (1673), 118. I give the Reader but a Sooty Relation of my Maladies.

1659.  W. Chamberlayne, Pharonnida, V. 204. Strook such a terror as if shadow’d by Death’s sooty vail.

1673.  O. Walker, Educ., ix. 78. Better for them to chide even without reason, then store up this sooty humour.

  c.  In the names of birds, etc., as sooty albatross, owl, petrel, tern, etc.

1777.  G. Forster, Voy. round World, I. 91. We likewise saw the two before mentioned species of albatrosses…, together with a third,… which we named the *sooty.

1829.  Griffith, trans. Cuvier, VIII. 573. Sooty Albatros. Diomedea Fuliginosa.

1872.  Coues, N. Amer. Birds, 326. Sooty Albatross. Fuliginous brown, nearly uniform. Ibid. (1884), 580. Canace obscura fuliginosa, *Sooty Grouse. Ibid. (1872), 345. *Sooty Guillemot.

1879.  *Sooty mangabey [see MANGABEY].

1785.  Pennant, Arct. Zool., II. 232. *Sooty Owl. Cinereous Owl.

1785.  Latham, Gen. Synop. Birds, III. II. 409. *Sooty Petrel … inhabits Otaheite.

1802.  [see PETREL].

1891.  Boston (Mass.) Jrnl., 21 Feb., 5/3. These birds were sooty petrels.

1872.  Coues, N. Amer. Birds, 331. *Sooty Shearwater. Dark sooty brown.

1785.  Pennant, Arct. Zool., II. 523. *Sooty Tern…. Crown, hind part of the head and neck, back, and wings, of a sooty blackness.

1870.  Gillmore, trans. Figuier’s Reptiles & Birds, 281. The Sooty Tern (Sterna fuliginosa) inhabits the bays and gulfs of the Mediterranean.

1801.  Latham, Gen. Synop. Birds, Suppl. II. 185. *Sooty Thrush…. The general colour of the plumage is dark greenish brown. Ibid. (1783), Gen. Synop. Birds, II. I. 451. *Sooty Warbler, Motacilla fulicata.

c. 1880.  Cassell’s Nat. Hist., III. 114. The *Sooty Water Mouse (Hydromys fuliginosus) is an inhabitant of Western Australia.

  d.  absol. as a moth-name.

  Also Old Sooty, the Devil. dial.

1832.  J. Rennie, Consp. Butterfl. & Moths, 98. The Sooty (Acosmetia caliginosa) appears in June.

  3.  Of colors: Having a dark, dusky, blackish or dirty tinge.

  (a)  1597.  Bp. Hall, Sat., I. vii. (1602), 16.

1730–46.  Thomson, Autumn, 952. Of every hue, from wan declining green To sooty dark.

1796.  Withering, Brit. Plants (ed. 3), IV. 296. Gills sooty grey, that is, powdered with black.

1828.  Stark, Elem. Nat. Hist., ">Elem. Nat. Hist., I. 112. Fur sooty brown above, grayish below.

1855.  Smedley, Occult Sciences, 54. Sooty-red was also the colour of Typhon.

1887.  W. Phillips, Brit. Discomycetes, 406. The cups are seated on a sooty-black space.

  (b)  1635.  Swan, Spec. M., v. § 2 (1643), 121. The things which it [lightning] striketh do use to look black, or of a sootie colour.

1658.  R. White, trans. Digby’s Powd. Symp. (1660), 39. All the white flowers are sullied with a sooty blackness.

1763.  Johnson, in Boswell, 25 June (Oxf. ed.), I. 268. By the heat of the sun the skin is scorched, and so acquires a sooty hue.

1785.  [see sooty tern in 2 c].

1884.  Newton, in Encycl. Brit., XVII. 531/1. The plumage [of the noddy] is of a uniform sooty hue.

  4.  Consisting of soot; of the nature of soot.

1651.  Charleton & P. M., Ephes. & Cimm. Matrons (1668), 49. Gross and sooty Exhalations, such as arise from ardors of the Body.

1683.  A. Snape, Anat. Horse, V. ii. (1686), 199. To be vents of the Brain, through which the impure and sooty excrements might exhale or evaporate.

1784.  Cowper, Task, IV. 292. The sooty films that play upon the bars, Pendulous.

1789.  J. Williams, Min. Kingd., I. 211. A quantity of black sooty stuff being thrown up by the spade or the plough.

1846.  Greener, Sci. Gunnery, 179. The barrels must be passed … through that flame … until the whole are covered with a black sooty covering.

1902.  A. C. Harmsworth, Motors & Motor Driving, 140. The interior of the tube becoming blackened by sooty deposit.

  5.  Comb., as sooty-faced, -like, -mouthed, -plumed adjs.

1684.  Otway, Atheist, III. i. One of those Sooty-fac’d Harlots.

1789.  J. Williams, Min. Kingd., I. 28. A soft, sooty-like substance.

1806.  J. Grahame, Birds of Scot., 58. The sooty-plum’d hedge-sparrow.

1826.  Blackw. Mag., XX. 512. Let not our readers imagine that this sooty-mouthed Libeller is poor and ignorant.

  Hence Sootied pa. pple., made sooty, blackened.

1615.  Chapman, Odyss., XIII. 635. Shirt and coat, all rent Tann’d, and all sootied with noisome smoke.