Lunting

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Setting something alight or getting a pipe, fire or match burning, a term used mainly in Scottish dialect
2. Kindling a flame or lighting a pipe, a usage found chiefly in Scots and northern English speech
3. Igniting or starting to smoke something, as with a pipe or fire, in regional Scottish usage

Etymology: "Lunting" is the present participle of "lunt", a Scots and northern English word meaning to kindle or set alight, or to smoke a pipe or cigar. The verb came into English from Dutch "lont", a word for a slow match or fuse, the cord that carried fire to a cannon or gun. That origin explains the sense: to lunt was to get a fuse or pipe glowing, and the flame spread from one thing to another. The Dutch "lont" itself belongs to a family of words for a wick or a smouldering strip of cord, and English picked it up in the context of firearms and tobacco. Over time the verb stayed mostly in dialect use, so "lunting" is most often heard in the phrase of a pipe or cigar being lit and drawn on, as in lunting away at a pipe.