Noun
sootball (plural sootballs)
- A ball of soot or ash.
1870, The Tract magazine; or, Christian miscellany: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.
1964, The Studio - Volumes 167-168, page 39:The painting is still conceived around a thick and sandy cloud that bursts like a fireball or sootball.
1994, I︠A︡.-M. K. Punning, The Influence of Natural and Anthropogenic Factors on the Development of Landscapes, page 21:In Lake Linajarv sediments also charcoal particles and sootballs were counted.
2005, Jerry Spinelli, The Library Card, →ISBN, page 87:Lashed to the chassis with wire, the tailpipe coughed gray sootballs that laid a low, semisweet cloud for half a mile behind.
2012, Jessica Stirling, The Dark Pasture: Book Three, →ISBN: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.