Chimney

Definitions

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.
2. The glass flue surrounding the flame of an oil lamp.
3. The smokestack of a steam locomotive.
   British
4. A narrow cleft in a rock face; a narrow vertical cave passage.
5. A vagina.
   euphemistic, vulgar
6. A black eye; a shiner.
   Northern-Ireland, slang

Equivalents

Examples

“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.”

“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⟳.”

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

“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[.]”

CEFR level