sootball

plural sootballs · alternative soot-ball · alternative soot ball

1. A ball of soot or ash.

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

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

   4 more examples

   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.

   1870, The Tract magazine; or, Christian miscellany

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

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

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

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

   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.

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