Lunt

Lunt (pronounced luhnt or loont)

(1) A match; the flame used to light a fire.

(2) Smoke or steam, especially smoke from a tobacco pipe.

(3) To emit smoke or steam.

(4) To smoke (historically a pipe, later cigarettes).

(5) To kindle a fire.

(6) To light a pipe, torch, etc.

(7) A match, torch, or port-fire once used for discharging cannon.

(8) The lock and appurtenances of a match-lock gun such as a musket.

(9) In Polish military slang, a cigarette.

1540–1550: From the Dutch lont (match, wick fuse) and related to the Danish & Middle Low German lunte (match, wick), the Old Norse lunta (to emit smoke) and the Swedish lunta (match, fuse).  In dialectical Scots English, lunting was the action of walking while smoking a pipe.  Middle English picked up the meaning of lunta from the Old Norse: "a whiff or puff of smoke" and in Middle English, it evolved into "lunt", again referring to a small quantity or puff of smoke.  In the way English does things, the meaning of "lunt" expanded, coming to be associated with a glowing match or a piece of burning material used to ignite a fire and it came to be used especially of firearms.  In the slang or dialects of several languages, "lunt" evolved to describe the glowing end of a cigar or a pipe and form this to refer to smoking in general although most forms are now archaic.  Lunt is a noun & verb and lunted & lunting are verbs; the noun plural is lunts. 

The place, the name, the road sign

Lunting Lindsay Lohan.

Unrelated to fuses and smoke, there is also the proper noun Lunt which serves both as surname and place-name.  A suggested alternative etymology linking Lunt to grassland never attracted much support.  As a surname, it’s English, but of pre-seventh century Norse-Viking origins; Recorded variously as Lunt, Lund, Lound, Lount and Lynt, it’s locationally associated with one of the various places called Louth, Lund or Lunt in different parts of the north and East Anglia.  These were areas of England under Viking control or influence for several centuries until the Norman Conquest of 1066.

Lunt's street signs are often defaced but a campaign in 2008 to change the name received little support.

The English village of Lunt lies in the parish of Sefton, close to to Liverpool.  Like the surname, the locality name was from the Old Old Norse Lundr or the Old Swedish lunder (grove or copse").  It's thought this was a reference to the remnants of a large ancient forest which substantially still stood when the settlement was founded.  The first known reference to the village dates from the parish records in the Chartulary of Cockersand Abbey, an entry from 1251 mentioning it was known as "de Lund".  The combination of a liveable climate, reliable sources of water and areas of arable land meant the location has long been associated with human habitation, archaeological digs revealing structures from the mesolithic (5800 BC), the indications being the inhabitants were hunter-gatherers.  For a certain sub-set of the population, the signage in Lunt's public spaces to just too tempting and defacement is common.  Those who deface are presumably from the population which which contributes to Urban Dictionary's definitions for the word, many of which, predictably, are used to degrade women, a category which must make up a remarkable percentage of the site's entries.