Some sate turning of spits, and the place being all smoaky, made me thinke on hell, for the ioynts of meat lay as if they had bene broyling in the infernall fier […]

[…] even the smoky air of one of the most smoky streets of the suburbs is chearful, and salubrious, to the oppression I felt in the chamber we have just left […]

1819, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Peter Bell the Third,” Part 3, in The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, London: Edward Moxon, 1839, p. 240,
Hell is a city much like London—
A populous and a smoky city;

1894, George Santayana, Sonnet, in Sonnets and Other Verses, Cambridge, MA: Stone and Kimball, p. 5,
Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine
That lights the pathway but one step ahead
Across a void of mystery and dread.

The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania.[…]It was used to make kerosene, the main fuel for artificial lighting after overfishing led to a shortage of whale blubber. Other liquids produced in the refining process, too unstable or smoky for lamplight, were burned or dumped.

The Pismire kinde of Aetius hath a smoky body, an ash-coloured neck, and the back as it were adorned with stars.

[…] the broken walls and roofs were distinguishable even at that distance, and sometimes a part, which had been repaired, contrasted its colour with the black and smoky hues of the remainder.

The saleswomen, with their all-black ensembles and smoky eyelids, were as open and affirming as the sight of RuPaul's spread legs in the Viva Glam lipstick ads.

[…] thei abstain from a smoky peace of Bacon or hard salted and poudred biefe or suche lyke […]

I smelled it the moment I entered—that sweet smoky reek.

[…] I too gave notice to the various wild inhabitants of Walden vale, by a smoky streamer from my chimney, that I was awake.

And now the sky was a bright sea sown with islands; they shrank and crumbled and drifted away, islands no more, but a multitude of plumes and flakes and smoky wreaths hastily scudding, for the sun had lifted his tranquil eye on the heavens […]

“Stop the York four-day stage!” said he, forcing his smoky voice through a world of throat-embracing shawl […]

Father laughed his smoky laugh. […] The smoky laughter like a bridge between them over your head.

There was still that smoky little thing about her. The sexy swaying walk, the dark voice.

Frankly, I don’t think his smoky Armenian looks drew their attention so much as the languid elegance of his manner […]

1962, Philip Larkin, “Billie’s Golden Years,” The Daily Telegraph, 17 October, 1962, republished in All What Jazz: A Record Diary, 1961—1971, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1985, p. 73,
[…] the sombre and magnificent Davis fronts both his Quartet and Gil Evans’s orchestra, pouring out a succession of smoky and sonorous solos […]

The organ took on a dark, smoky sonority at evening service, and there was no doubt that the organ was adapting its normal sounds to accompany God’s own sepulchral responses […] to those prayers that were offered to him.

[…] there emerged from the car a pair of the sort of legs which soundtrack editors are unable to see without needing to slap a smoky saxophone solo all over […]

Then, just as the music, slow and smoky, loads up the air, his smile bright as ever, he wrinkles his nose and turns away.

1594, Thomas Kyd (translator), Cornelia (Cornélie) by Robert Garnier, London: Nicholas Ling and John Busbie, Act V,
He wrencht it [his sword] to the pommel through his sides,
That fro the wound the smoky blood ran bubling,
Where-with he staggred;

Dark was the Path, and difficult, and steep,

[…] to shewe them selfe playnely, to hate & deteste and abhorre vtterly, the pestylent contagyon of all suche smoky communycacyon.

If besides vayne crakes of smoky speeches, ye shewe no demonstration of sounde proofe, why these bragges of yours should be true, let vs graunt your saying.

[…] scrambling with such distracted violence for the smoaky honours, the nominal wealth, the intoxicating pleasures of a few hasty daies […]

1765, Samuel Foote, The Commissary, Act I, in The Works of Samuel Foote, London: George Robinson et al., 1799, Volume 2, p. 18,
[…] this old brother of ours tho’ is smoky and shrewd, and tho’ an odd, a sensible fellow;

Smoky

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