Dictionary

smokestack en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (US) audio
• /ˈsmoʊkˌstæk/ (General-American)

Etymology

Etymology tree Old English smoca Middle English smoke English smoke English stack English smokestack From smoke + stack.

Meanings

1. A conduit or group of conduits atop a structure allowing smoke to flow out, as on a steam locomotive, ship, factory, or power plant using fossil fuels.
   • With its long tapered cowcatcher, massive headlamp and enormous diamond smokestack behind, wagon-top boiler, high running-plate above the driving-wheels reached from a front door in the square side-window cab, cylinders with slide valves mounted on top, and double bogie tender, General in its present form is typical of much earlier American locomotive practice. 1942 February 14, “Notes and News: An Historic American Locomotive”, in Railway Magazine, page 56:
   • One of those areas can be found at the city’s northern edge, where the towering smokestacks of Wuhan Iron and Steel loom behind bent-backed farmers tending vegetable patches. Today Qingshan district is a patchwork of tiny fields, polluted streams and roadside markets selling building materials. But the city government is in the process of transforming this no-man’s-land into a sparkling new suburb. Between the steelworks and the mighty Yangtze River, demolished buildings and hoardings advertise a new logistics centre. Down the road, a giant railway station (Wuhan’s third) and a 6-kilometre bridge (the city’s fifth to cross the Yangtze) were completed in 2010. 2012, Tom Miller, “The Construction Orgy: Paving the Fields”, in China's Urban Billion: The Story Behind the Biggest Migration in Human History, London; New York, N.Y.: Zed Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 114:

Forms

Deriveds

smokestack industry

Relateds

chimney · flue