Smoke (?), n. [AS. smoca, fr. smeócan to smoke; akin to LG. & D. smook smoke, Dan. smög, G. schmauch, and perh. to Gr. ��� to burn in a smoldering fire; cf. Lith. smaugti to choke.] 1. The visible exhalation, vapor, or substance that escapes, or expelled, from a burning body, especially from burning vegetable matter, as wood, coal, peat, or the like.
☞ The gases of hydrocarbons, raised to a red heat or thereabouts, without a mixture of air enough to produce combustion, disengage their carbon in a fine powder, forming smoke. The disengaged carbon when deposited on solid bodies is soot.
2. That which resembles smoke; a vapor; a mist.
3. Anything unsubstantial, as idle talk. Shak.
4. The act of smoking, esp. of smoking tobacco; as, to have a smoke.
☞ Smoke is sometimes joined with other word. forming self-explaining compounds; as, smoke-consuming, smoke-dried, smoke-stained, etc.
Smoke arch, the smoke box of a locomotive. — Smoke ball(Mil.), a ball or case containing a composition which, when it burns, sends forth thick smoke. — Smoke black, lampblack. — Smoke board, a board suspended before a fireplace to prevent the smoke from coming out into the room. — Smoke box, a chamber in a boiler, where the smoke, etc., from the furnace is collected before going out at the chimney. — Smoke sail(Naut.), a small sail in the lee of the galley stovepipe, to prevent the smoke from annoying people on deck. — Smoke tree(Bot.), a shrub (Rhus Cotinus) in which the flowers are mostly abortive and the panicles transformed into tangles of plumose pedicels looking like wreaths of smoke. — To end in smoke, to burned; hence, to be destroyed or ruined; figuratively, to come to nothing.
Syn. — Fume; reek; vapor.