▪ I. sooty, n. slang (orig. U.S.).
(ˈsʊtɪ)
[f. sooty a.]
An offensive name for a Black person.
| 1838 Hesperian Dec. 117/1 The night was enlivened by the music of a cracked fiddle, in the hands of a negro lad, while two or three small sooties kicked up a dust about them. 1986 Sunday Express Mag. 28 Dec. 18/4, I am not racialist, but I can't bear to watch the sooties any more—it's like Uncle Tom's Cabin. 1986 G. F. Newman Set Thief iv. 48 Pick your fucking feet up, sooty. |
▪ II. sooty, a. (
ˈsʊtɪ)
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. a. 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 Stuff Wks. (Grosart) V. 275 Hee..hung the residue..in the sooty roofe of his shad a drying. 1625 K. Long tr. 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 tr. Fresny's Amusem. 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 Meredith Amazing Marriage viii, When the wind puffs down a sooty chimney the air is filled with little blacks. |
| transf. 1740 Somerville Hobbinot 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 Unwholsome Dews..That blast the sooty Corn. |
2. a. Resembling soot in colour; 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, 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. 1964 L. Deighton Funeral in Berlin xvii. 105 The girl..fluttered her big sooty eyes. 1976 ‘A. Hall’ Kobra Manifesto ii. 23 Black hair and a grey face and sooty bags under his eyes. |
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,
sooty owl,
sooty petrel,
sooty 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 tr. Cuvier VIII. 573 Sooty Albatros. Diomedea Fuliginosa. 1872 Coues N. Amer. Birds 326 Sooty Albatross. Fuliginous brown, nearly uniform. |
| 1884 Ibid. 580 Canace obscura fuliginosa, *Sooty Grouse. |
| 1872 Ibid. 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 tr. 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. |
| 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. & M. 98 The Sooty (Acosmetia caliginosa) appears in June. |
e. In the names of plant diseases, as
sooty blotch, a fungal disease of apples, pears, and citruses which is caused by
Glœodes pomigena and gives rise to darkish blotches on the skin of the fruit;
sooty mould, any of several fungal diseases of trees and shrubs which cause a dark discoloration of their fruit.
| 1901 H. M. Ward Disease in Plants xxv. 232 [Honeydew] serves as nutritive material for various epiphytic fungi—e.g. sooty mould, Capnodium, Fumago, and Antennaria. 1902 Ann. Rep. Secretary Connecticut Board Agric. 1901 132 Among the diseases in this class which prey upon either the fruit or the foliage of the apple..are the bitter rot..and the sooty blotch. 1939 Sooty blotch [see fly-speck s.v. fly n.1 11]. 1939 Ann. Bot. III. 401 The distinction between parasitic and saprophytic ‘sooty moulds’..appears to be valid. 1952 E. Ramsden tr. Gram & Weber's Plant Diseases ii. 126/2 Sooty mould can be avoided by keeping the tree free from aphides. Ibid. 127/1 Associated with Leptothyrium pomi is usually the fungus of sooty blotch, Gloeodes pomigena. 1969 G. N. Agrios Plant Path. ii. 19 Certain fungi, e.g., those causing sooty molds, can cause disease by growing on the surface of the plant and feeding on insect excretions rather than by parasitizing the plant. |
3. Of colours: Having a dark, dusky, blackish, or dirty tinge.
| (a) 1597 Bp. Hall Sat. i. vii, Be shee all sootie-black, or bery-browne, Shee's white as morrows milk. 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. 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 tr. 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 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-eyed,
sooty-faced,
sooty-like,
sooty-mossed,
sooty-mouthed,
sooty-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. 1874 G. M. Hopkins Jrnls. & Papers (1959) 247 Sooty-mossed boulders in foreground. 1964 L. Deighton Funeral in Berlin xvii. 106 The sooty-eyed girl laughed. |
Hence
ˈsootied pa. pple., made sooty, blackened.
| 1615 Chapman Odyss. xiii. 635 Shirt and coat, all rent Tann'd, and all sootied with noisome smoke. |