smelt - Dictionary Definition : Vocabulary.com

No, this verb doesn't involve using your nose. When you smelt metal, you remove it from ore, or rock. Heat is required to smelt iron.

Smelt looks a lot like melt and that is an easy way to remember what this process involves. To smelt metal, you have to heat the rock, which is called ore, until the metal inside it melts or liquefies. That metal is the part that has use and value, but hard work is needed to extract it.

PRIMARY MEANINGS OF: smelt

1	v	extract (metals) by heating
2	n	small cold-water silvery fish; migrate between salt and fresh water

FULL DEFINITIONS OF: smelt

1

v extract (metals) by heating

Type of:: create, make, produce
create or manufacture a man-made product

2

n small cold-water silvery fish; migrate between salt and fresh water

Types:: American smelt, rainbow smelt
common smelt of eastern North America and Alaska; European smelt, sparling
common smelt of Europe

Type of:: fish
the flesh of fish used as food

n small trout-like silvery marine or freshwater food fishes of cold northern waters

Types:: Osmerus mordax, rainbow smelt
important marine and landlocked food fish of eastern North America and Alaska; European smelt, Osmerus eperlanus, sparling
the common smelt of Europe; capelan, capelin, caplin
very small northern fish; forage for sea birds and marine mammals and other fishes

Type of:: malacopterygian, soft-finned fish
any fish of the superorder Malacopterygii