Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
alt. 1 (context intransitive English) To smoke cigarettes by continuously lighting one from the glowing end of the previous one. 2 (context intransitive English) To smoke tobacco cigarettes frequently. 3 (context transitive English) To smoke by continuously lighting one from another. vb. 1 (context intransitive English) To smoke cigarettes by continuously lighting one from the glowing end of the previous one. 2 (context intransitive English) To smoke tobacco cigarettes frequently. 3 (context transitive English) To smoke by continuously lighting one from another.
WordNet
v. smoke one cigarette after another; light one cigarette from the preceding one
Usage examples of "chain-smoke".
He chain-smoked, and over time packed in excess of 300 pounds onto a frame so naturally slight it once earned him mounts as a jockey.
Receiving his orders, Luis cast his thoughts back to the map room, to fat Grimm and chain-smoking Breit pacing beside the board.
During the past forty minutes, he had sat mostly in silence, chain-smoking Lucky Strikes while the prime minister painted nightmare scenarios of the eleventh-hour appearance of Sarin and Soman on the D-day beaches.
Roth is introduced to flight directors, deputy flight directors, flight surgeons, ground controllers, cosmonauts, former cosmonauts, Energia executives, TsUP administrators, several chain-smoking engineers, and a janitor.
Idly he noticed that they all wore dark stockings and ate mints and chain-smoked while they stared at the monitors, controls, and running order with intense concentration.
There were Irish families crammed into basements, and pregnant housewives chain-smoking on the stoops, and bendy old men in flares and parched gym-shoes drinking tinned beer under the warm breath of the coin-op.
He supposed that if in real life Addie had ever stubbed out one of her chain-smoked cigarettes and unzipped his fly he'd have gone limp as month-old rhubarb but still he liked to sit with his knee pressed accidentally on purpose up against her thigh while she asked her reporter's ever-serious questions.
I couldn't stop to talk sense with chain-smoking, raspy voiced Darlene of Darlene's Antiques and Collectibles, or my son would explode.
She chain-smoked cigarettes and kept well clear of the rear of the art room, where Sean made a fine picture of innocence as he applied himself with unusual industry to his easel.
He whispered, remember, that this somebody was hoarse as a grater and nevertheless chain-smoked all day long.
Stephanie smelled like freshly baked bread, sagebrush, and black tobacco: she chain-smoked French cigarettes called Gauloises, always blowing the smoke out with dispassionate and unselfconscious slowness, like a tired Depression farm woman (photographed by Dorothea Lange), or an exhausted, withdrawn whore.
He chain-smoked nervously as he sat over coffee and watched the jets leaving for Europe.
He was still rake-thin and chain-smoked nervously, a habit that belied his cold nerve when in action.
He is overweight, chain-smokes, and the grey in his hair marks him as over fifty, yet he's never sick.
By the standards of the body nazis who infest California and Seattle, this is only a marginal improvement over (say) sitting in front of a television chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes and eating suet from a tub.