[f. SOOTY a. + -NESS.] The condition or property of being sooty; dirtiness or blackness from, or as from, soot.
1611. Cotgr., Fuligine, soot, sootinesse; smoakinesse.
c. 1628. Donne, Serm., lv. (1640), 557. There growes a blacknesse, a sootinesse upon the soule, by custome in sin.
1727. in Bailey (vol. II.).
1866. Spectator, 1 Dec., 1339. Every new addition … is successively hailed…, and then passes into deserved contempt and sootiness.
1892. Photogr. Ann., II. 711. That dense sootiness which so frequently spoils collotype work.
