cigarette
Etymology

Borrowed from French cigarette, from cigare, from Spanish cigarro + diminutive suffix -ette.

Pronunciation
  • IPA: /ˈsɪ.ɡə.ɹɛt/, /sɪ.ɡəˈɹɛt/
Noun

cigarette (plural cigarettes)

  1. Tobacco or other substances, in a thin roll wrapped with paper, intended to be smoked.
    • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC ↗, page 46 ↗:
      No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or otherwise his man would be there with a message to say that his master would shortly join me if I would kindly wait.
    • 1989 January 27, Stephen Fry et al., “Doctor Tobacco”, in A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Season 1, Episode 3:
      Tobacconist: Right. I want to try you on a course of these: one twenty times a day. Have you taken them before?
      Patient: Um, what is it?
      Tobacconist: It's a simple nicotinal arsenous monoxid preparation taken bronchially as an infumation.
      Patient: Infumation?
      Tobacconist: Yes, you just light the end and breathe it.
      Patient: What, like cigarettes?
      Tobacconist: You know them then. Actually, it's a bit hard to admit but they're basically an herbal remedy... A leaf originally from the Americas, I believe, called tobacco.
      Patient: But medicated?
      Tobacconist: Medicated? No.
      Patient: These are ordinary cigarettes?
      Tobacconist: That's right.
      Patient: But they're terribly bad for you, aren't they?
      Tobacconist: I hardly think I would be prescribing them if they were bad for you.
      Patient: Twenty a day?
      Tobacconist: Yes, ideally moving on to about thirty or forty.
Synonyms Translations Verb

cigarette (cigarettes, present participle cigaretting; simple past and past participle cigaretted)

  1. (transitive, slang, rare) To give someone a cigarette, or to light one for them.
    Could someone cigarette me?



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