[Vocabulary] Haze, fog,smog ,mist which one is the formal english to describe the polluted air?

[yibiandaizhe]

Haze, fog,smog ,mist which one is the formal english to describe the polluted air?

Thanks for the helps, im facing problem to discribe on polluted air quality of the weather.

i used the word mist on oral english and talk to native speakers, but they dont understand what i mean.

so i got really confused on these words with similarity, which one is used for oral speaking, and which one should be used formally or acdamically?



Many thanks

 

[Barb_D]

Welcome to Using English.

Mist and fog are naturally occurring. Fog is more dense than mist. I'm sure there are scientific differences too, but I do not know what they are.

Haze can be from a natural phenomenon (like mist) or from pollution.

Smog is the result of pollution and probably the word you want.

Please remember that the pronoun "I" is always capitalized and that you should put a space AFTER your punctuation mark, not before it.

 

[Tdol]

Haze is in use in BrE for the polluted air of the current conditions. I am honestly not sure whether this is a fashion or whether there is a clear difference between this and smog.

Your words are neutral to me and could be used formally or informally.

 

[5jj]

I don't think we'd use haze of the thick smogs I remember from my youth. You can see things at some distance, albeit not very clearly, through a haze. In a smog you could sometimes hardly see the person you had just walked into.

 

[yibiandaizhe]

Thank you very much for your corrections, and your definitions of smog seemed pretty clear to me . also I want to add that smog = smoke+fog , am I right?

 

[5jj]

Yes

 

[MikeNewYork]

Since you are French, I will tell you about words like "smog". A word that is formed by combining parts of two words is a called a portmanteau word in English. Other common ones are "brunch" (breakfast + lunch) and "motel" (motor + hotel).