the.com/smut
literature's worst-kept secret and publishing's most reliable cash cow, wearing a paper bag over its head
means Indecent or obscene material, especially in writing or pictures; also, dirt, soot, or a black fungal disease of cereal crops.
from From a Germanic root meaning 'dirt' or 'stain' — related to German 'Schmutz' (filth) and the old verb 'to smut,' meaning to blacken or smudge. The literal sense came first: soot on the fingers, the sooty fungus that blackened wheat in the field. The naughty meaning is a soot-stain of the imagination — something dirty in the moral rather than literal sense — and emerged later as a figurative blackening of clean talk.
- crop disease
- Smut is also a fungus that blackens cereal grains
- top genre
- Romance outsells most other fiction genres combined
- ancient roots
- Pompeii's walls held explicit graffiti two millennia ago
- taboo origin
- Word once meant soot, dirt, or moral stain
fifty shades of grey — e.l. james novel series with 100+ million copies sold worldwide
outlander — diana gabaldon's romance series with explicit sexual content, adapted into starz tv series
beautiful bastard — christina lauren's erotic romance novel, #1 on new york times bestseller list 2013