smoking

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
smoke/sməʊk/

▶noun

• 1 a visible suspension of carbon or other particles in the air, typically one emitted from a burning substance.

• 2 an act of smoking tobacco.

  ■ informal a cigarette or cigar.

• 3 (the Smoke or the Big Smoke) Brit. a big city, especially London.

▶verb

• 1 emit smoke.

• 2 inhale and exhale the smoke of tobacco or a drug.

• 3 treat, fumigate, or cleanse by exposure to smoke.

  ■ cure or preserve (meat or fish) by exposure to smoke.

  ■ subdue (bees in a hive) by exposing them to smoke.

• 4 (usu. as adj. smoked) treat (glass) so as to darken it.

• 5 (smoke someone/thing out) drive someone or something out of a place by using smoke.

• 6 N. Amer. informal kill by shooting.

• 7 archaic make fun of.

– phrases
go up in smoke informal

• 1 be destroyed by fire.

• 2 (of a plan) come to nothing.

there's no smoke without fire there is always some factual basis for a rumour.
smoke and mirrors N. Amer. the use of misleading or irrelevant information to obscure or embellish the truth.

– derivatives
smokable (also smokeable) adjective,
smoked adjective,
smokeless adjective,
smoking adjective & noun.

– origin OE smoca (n.), smocian (v.), from the Gmc base of smēocan ‘emit smoke’.