sooty

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

“Smog” is a turn-of-the-century portmanteau word mashing together “smoke” and “fog” to describe the sooty, sulfurous air of the London of Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 26, 2026

Malick Diop grew up in Senegal in a thatched-roof hut with a dirt floor, sooty walls and roaming goats.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 11, 2026

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, typing to you from underneath a sooty, icy snow boulder that has covered the entirety of D.C. for a week.

From Slate • Jan. 31, 2026

The other side of the detective’s profile has him strolling between the starched propriety of upper-class society and the sooty underbelly, doing rich men’s dirty work.

From Salon • Apr. 16, 2025

It was a desolate, cratered face, sooty with care like an abandoned mining town.

From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller