A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1323 entries
smut
Smut is a fungal disease of grasses and grain in which the fungus replaces the developing seed with a mass of black powdery spores, so an infected head of wheat, oats, or maize carries soot instead of grain. Several hundred species exist and most attack one host. The infection is often systemic, growing inside the plant from the seedling stage and only becoming visible at flowering.
Etymology
The word is English and comes from a root meaning a spot or a smudge of dirt, related to Low German and Dutch words for the same, and it was used of the disease before it was used of anything indecent. The obscene sense came later, by way of the general meaning of something dirty, so the agricultural word is the original and the familiar one is the metaphor.
Notes
Corn smut is a delicacy in Mexico, where it is called huitlacoche and is harvested deliberately, sold at a higher price than the maize it grew on, and cooked into quesadillas and soups. American growers spent a century trying to eliminate it and some now cultivate it. It is one of the clearer cases of the same organism being a disease in one culture and a crop in another.