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smoky

US/ˈsmoʊki/
adjectiveB25 meaningsOccasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,710 of 15,258neutral

Smoky means tasting or smelling of wood fire. Bacon out of a smokehouse, a whisky that tastes of a peat fire, the way your coat smells the morning after a bonfire.

It works for air as well as for flavour: a smoky kitchen, a smoky old pub from before the ban. Colours borrow it — smoky grey, smoky quartz, smoky eye make-up — where it means soft and hazy rather than burnt. A smoky voice is low and rough in a way people find attractive. The spelling drops the e: smoky, smokier, smokiest, smokiness. Smokey turns up on labels and brand names, and nowhere in careful writing.

Definitions of smoky

  1. 1adjectivesmokyTasting of wood smoke.B2

    “The cheese had a smoky edge to it, like something cooked over a fire.”

    • Said"That sauce is lovely and smoky; did you use the paprika?"
    • WrittenThe cheese had a smoky edge from the fire it had hung above all winter.
    • UsedAdd a smoky note with charred peppers or a little chipotle.
    • ContrastSmoky, not burnt. Burnt is black and bitter; smoky is the warm taste of wood smoke, put there on purpose. burnt →
    • Not thisA room full of smoke is smoky in another sense. Here smoky is a flavour.
    • SimplyThe fish is smoky. It tastes of wood.

    Patterna smoky flavour / taste / finish · smoky bacon · smoked · smokiness

    synonyms: smoked

  2. 2adjectivesmellSmelling of burning wood.B2

    “Her hair was smoky from standing too close to the barbecue.”

  3. 3adjectivefullFull of smoke.B2

    “The kitchen was smoky, so we opened both windows.”

  4. 4adjectivesoftSoft, hazy and greyish in colour.B2

    “She chose a smoky blue for the bedroom walls.”

  5. 5adjectivevoice(of a voice) low and slightly rough.C1

    “He had a smoky voice that carried right across the bar.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

Remember it

SMOKy → it tastes of SMOKE

It is smoke + y: meat cooked over a wood fire tastes of the smoke.

hooks ontosmoke

Also practised as

  • adjectiveSmelling of burning wood.

Where it comes from

There is no clever history here: smoky is smoke with -y stuck on the end. Middle English writers were already using it, spelling it smoki, smokie and smoky before the modern form settled. The e falls away when the ending goes on, which is why it is smoky and not smokey.

  1. Middle English

    smoke,smokei,smoki,smokie,smoky

  2. English, today

    smoky

From Middle English smoke,smokei,smoki,smokie,smoky, equivalent to smoke + y. a doublet of Samoki.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen

Practise this word

smoky in the wild

  • Sometimes it is blended with lapsang souchong tea, which lends a smoky character.

    Earl Grey tea

  • A 1930s-style jazz ballad with piano, drum, double bass, and horns, the track conjures up the atmosphere of a smoky nightclub.

    Sooner or Later (Madonna song)

  • Chiefly written by Dean, the smoky downtempo song was initially written for and recorded by a male singer but partially reconstructed for Monica.

    Here I Am (Monica song)

  • The paintings depict the smoky interior of the eponymous railway station in varied atmospheric conditions and from various points of view.

    Gare Saint-Lazare (Monet series)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.