Other forms: chimneys
A chimney is the tall pipe on a roof that carries smoke away. A brick chimney, sweep the chimney, smoke from the chimney.
The part inside the wall is the flue and the pot on top is the chimney pot. Chimneys need sweeping because soot builds up and burns, and chimney fires are a real cause of house fires. Note chimney sweep; smoke like a chimney, meaning to smoke a great deal; and that in climbing, a chimney is a narrow vertical crack you climb by pressing against both sides.
1nounchimneyA pipe on a roof that carries smoke away.
“The chimney has not been swept since about 1998.”
chimney is a smoke pipe.
Latin caminata means a room with a fireplace, from caminus, a furnace, borrowed from Greek. The word travelled through French and named the pipe rather than the room it once described.
Proto-Indo-European
*kh₂em-
Latin
camīnāta
Old French
cheminee
Middle English
chymeneye
English, today
chimney
From Middle English chymeneye, chymneye, chymene, from Old French cheminee, from Latin camīnāta, from Latin camīnus, from Ancient Greek κάμῑνος (“furnace”). a doublet of chimenea.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA