chimney

plural chimneys · archaic plural chimnies · alternative dialectal chimley · alternative dialectal chimbley

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.

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

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

   2 more 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.

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

   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.

   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

   Synonyms: lum

2. The glass flue surrounding the flame of an oil lamp.

   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[.]

   1977, K.M. Elizabeth Murray, Caught in the Web of Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 22

3. UKThe smokestack of a steam locomotive.
4. A narrow cleft in a rock face; a narrow vertical cave passage.
5. euphemisticvulgarA vagina.
6. Northern IrelandslangA black eye; a shiner.

present singular third person chimneys · participle present chimneying · participle past chimneyed · past chimneyed · alternative dialectal chimley · alternative dialectal chimbley

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