# chimney
## English
### Alternative forms

* chimley, chimbley (dialectal)

### Etymology

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.

### Pronunciation

* (UK, US) IPA: /ˈt͡ʃɪmni/, (proscribed) /ˈt͡ʃɪməni/
* Audio (US):(file)

### Noun

chimney (plural chimneys or (archaic) chimnies)
* 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.
* 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[.]
* (British) The smokestack of a steam locomotive.
* A narrow cleft in a rock face; a narrow vertical cave passage.
* (vulgar, euphemistic) A vagina.
* (Northern Ireland, slang) A black eye; a shiner.

#### Derived terms

* chimney balloon
* chimney board
* chimney breast
* chimney-breast
* chimney cake
* chimney campanula
* chimney can
* chimney cap
* chimney corner
* chimney-corner
* chimney-duty
* chimney effect
* chimney fire
* chimney flashing
* chimney flute
* chimneyful
* chimney-glass
* chimney hook
* chimneyless
* chimneylike
* chimney money
* chimney-money
* chimney-piece
* chimneypiece
* chimney piece
* chimney pot
* chimney-pot hat
* Chimney Rock
* chimneyscape
* chimney stack
* chimney stalk
* chimney swallow
* chimney sweep
* chimney-sweep
* chimney-sweeper
* chimney sweeper
* chimney sweep's cancer
* chimney sweep's carcinoma
* chimney swift
* fairy chimney
* pie chimney
* smoke like a chimney
* sweep-chimney

#### Descendants

* → Bengali: চিমনি (cimoni)
* → Hindustani:
    → Hindi: चिमनी (cimnī)
    → Urdu: چِمْنی (cimnī)

#### Translations
### Verb

chimney (third-person singular simple present chimneys, present participle chimneying, simple past and past participle chimneyed)
* (climbing) To negotiate a chimney (narrow vertical cave passage) by pushing against the sides with back, feet, hands, etc.

### See also

* cowl
* fireplace
* flaunching
* flue
* smokestack
* stove