sootball

English

Alternative forms

• soot-ball
• soot ball

Etymology

soot +‎ ball

Noun

sootball (plural sootballs)

1. A ball of soot or ash.
   • 1870, The Tract magazine; or, Christian miscellany:

     If you tell Brown and me (as you have) that the doctor is a dram-drinker, what is to hinder us from telling the story to others, with a few embellishments, perhaps ? And so the snowball (the sootball rather) would be set rolling.

   • 1964, The Studio - Volumes 167-168, page 39:

     The painting is still conceived around a thick and sandy cloud that bursts like a fireball or sootball.

   • 1994, I︠A︡.-M. K. Punning, The Influence of Natural and Anthropogenic Factors on the Development of Landscapes, page 21:

     In Lake Linajarv sediments also charcoal particles and sootballs were counted.

   • 2005, Jerry Spinelli, The Library Card, →ISBN, page 87:

     Lashed to the chassis with wire, the tailpipe coughed gray sootballs that laid a low, semisweet cloud for half a mile behind.

   • 2012, Jessica Stirling, The Dark Pasture: Book Three, →ISBN:

     Moving nearer to the French-tiled grate, Edith saw that the fire had burned quite low, and that a fragment of soot, round as a ball, adhered to the lip of the grate. She recalled the old superstition that a sootball forecast a visitor.