chimney

noun

1. 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.

   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.

2. 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[.]

3. 3

   The smokestack of a steam locomotive.

4. 4

   A narrow cleft in a rock face; a narrow vertical cave passage.

5. 5

   A vagina.

6. 6

   slangA black eye; a shiner.

verb

1. 1

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

Forms

plural

chimneys, chimnies

past tense

chimneyed

past participle

chimneyed

present participle

chimneying

third person singular

chimneys