How to Use sooty in a Sentence

sooty

adjective
  • Oily, sooty residue was all over the city.
    — Arundathi Nair, NPR, 17 Mar. 2026
  • His makeup was more punk-inspired this time around, too, with sooty, lived-in black liner.
    — Devon Abelman, Allure, 16 May 2018
  • Fingertips blackened by heating the drug may leave sooty stains on walls.
    — Shari Rudavsky, Indianapolis Star, 22 July 2019
  • Gray paint on the side of the building was still sooty and peeling, the sidewalk mottled and black.
    — Los Angeles Times, 15 Aug. 2019
  • Then, the first stage safely—if a bit sooty—made a near-perfect landing back on Earth.
    — Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 15 Dec. 2017
  • Howard said that three or four sooty terns (seabirds) working a weedline is often a good sign of dolphin.
    — Steve Waters, Sun-Sentinel.com, 25 May 2017
  • For performances in the past, he's adorned his eyes with bloody scratch-like liner and ultra-sooty smoky eyes.
    — Devon Abelman, Allure, 20 Apr. 2021
  • Now all the freight cars were filled to the top with sooty iron ore, giving Guerin no choice but to climb on top for the ride home.
    — Michael Hardy, Wired, 27 Apr. 2020
  • Another photo from a nearby apartment shows a sooty door with a large hole above the doorknob.
    — CBS News, 15 July 2017
  • The fuel mix was now richer in oxygen, the burn cleaner and less sooty, more powerful.
    — Oliver Morton, WIRED, 4 June 2019
  • In the end, there is only one person who still needs Smoot’s help — the boy who cast the sooty shadow in the first place.
    — Frank Viva, New York Times, 15 Dec. 2017
  • Speaking of new, some of you may have been seeing plain, sooty gray birds invading your feeding stations.
    — Taylor Piephoff, charlotteobserver, 29 Mar. 2018
  • McNamee wrapped his arms around him, the boy screaming the same phrase over and over into the district chief's sooty coat.
    — Sean Flynn, Esquire, 9 Mar. 2017
  • If coal is king, then China, which burns half the world’s coal supply every year, is a sooty emperor.
    — Nathaniel Taplin, WSJ, 25 Sep. 2017
  • Firefighters were sooty and exhausted after days of being forced to retreat as the blaze leaped over fire lines.
    — Los Angeles Times, 20 July 2021
  • The glacier looked a bit sooty instead of pristine, perhaps from the ashes of wildfires raging a province to the west.
    — Debbi Snook, cleveland.com, 18 Mar. 2018
  • These were shiny and modern, in contrast to the sooty wood-burning stove in back, which might have been from another century.
    — Pete Wells, New York Times, 13 June 2017
  • The sooty eyeliner, atomic red hair, and combat boots Stone's been wearing while shooting the film point to punk rock roots.
    — Lauren Valenti, Vogue, 12 Nov. 2019
  • Old-timers will tell you the air around Pittsburgh used to be so thick with sooty particles that city workers would change into new shirts at lunch.
    — Sharon Kelly, Cincinnati.com, 6 Jan. 2020
  • Sooty mold grows on the excreta of insects; control both with a horticultural oil spray.
    — Tom MacCubbin, OrlandoSentinel.com, 26 Aug. 2017
  • Then there's the Graving Dock Tavern that served its last pint over a decade ago, but still soberly stands up aside the sooty verges.
    — Paul Talling, CNN, 10 July 2017
  • Fifty floors up, facing east, a pair of large horizontal windows were punched out, and the glass and metal facade above appeared scorched and sooty.
    — John Leland and Luis Ferre-Sadurni, BostonGlobe.com, 9 Apr. 2018
  • Its glass towers give way to lush green hillsides, a welcome escape from Beijing and Shanghai’s sooty gray air.
    — Don Lee, latimes.com, 30 June 2017
  • There’s a good chance the French government can find a replacement by 2021 and be rid of the sooty stuff for good.
    — Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, 25 Jan. 2018
  • The American black vulture (Coragyps atratus) are easy to spot with their dark, sooty plumage, bald black heads, and short tails.
    — Elizabeth Gamillo, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Sep. 2021
  • Without further ado, here are the sultriest, sootiest ways to create smoky eyes — all under $20.
    — Devon Abelman, Allure, 23 Jan. 2018
  • Researchers continue to study the long-term health impact on people exposed to sooty air at the Trade Center site.
    — Frank Eltman, chicagotribune.com, 11 Sep. 2017
  • Some of the plant sap and insect excreta drop on the foliage to provide a substrate for the sooty mold fungus that now coats the leaves of your allamanda.
    — Tom MacCubbin, OrlandoSentinel.com, 27 May 2017
  • The spacecraft also found that the sooty material currently makes up about 1% of Saturn’s icy rings.
    — Quanta Magazine, 26 Nov. 2019
  • The train, which carried passengers and freight, got its nickname from the sooty exhaust the steam engine belched forth, forming a black film on passengers' clothing.
    — NOLA.com, 14 July 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sooty.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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