chimney

• chimley, chimbley (dialectal)

From Middle English chymeney, chymney, chymne, from Old French cheminee, from Late Latin camīnāta, from Latin camīnus, from Ancient Greek κάμῑνος (kámīnos, “furnace”). Doublet of chimenea.

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃɪmni/, (proscribed) /ˈt͡ʃɪməni/

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chimney (plural chimneys or (archaic) chimnies)

1. A vertical tube or hollow column used to emit environmentally polluting gaseous and solid matter (including but not limited to by-products of burning carbon- or hydrocarbon-based fuels); a flue.

   Synonym: (Northern England, Scotland) lum

   • 1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC:

     Our chimney was a square hole in the roof: it was but a little part of the smoke that found its way out, and the rest eddied about the house, and kept us coughing and piping the eye.

   • 1890, William Howard Russell, “Iquique to the Pampas”, in A Visit to Chile and the Nitrate Fields of Tarapacá, Etc., London: J[ames] S[prent] Virtue & Co., […], page 171:

     The external aspect of the oficina was not unlike that of a north-country coal or iron mine—tall chimneys and machinery, corrugated iron buildings, offices and houses, the shanties of workmen, a high bank of refuse.

   • 1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 112:

     Witches always anointed themselves with ointments before departing up the chimney to their Sabbaths.

2. The glass flue surrounding the flame of an oil lamp.
   • 1977, K.M. Elizabeth Murray, Caught in the Web of Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 22:

     By next winter he was spending every evening poring over the work of Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné on the French Reformation by the light of a little oil lamp, with a tiny cistern the size of an orange and no chimney[.]

3. (British) The smokestack of a steam locomotive.
4. A narrow cleft in a rock face; a narrow vertical cave passage.
5. (vulgar, euphemistic) A vagina.
6. (Northern Ireland, slang) A black eye; a shiner.

• → Bengali: চিমনি (cimoni)
• → Hindustani:

  → Hindi: चिमनी (cimnī)

  → Urdu: چِمْنی (cimnī)

• → Unami: chìmìni

chimney (third-person singular simple present chimneys, present participle chimneying, simple past and past participle chimneyed)

1. (climbing) To negotiate a chimney (narrow vertical cave passage) by pushing against the sides with back, feet, hands, etc.

• cowl
• fireplace
• flaunching
• flue
• smokestack
• stove