Charcoal is the light, black stuff left when wood is burned slowly with almost no air. The grey-black lumps you tip into a barbecue, the black smudge it leaves on your fingers, the stick an artist drags across paper.
Artists' charcoal is that same material cut into sticks: it smudges under a thumb, which is why charcoal drawings look soft at the edges. Charcoal is also a colour — a very dark grey, close to black, the shade of a charcoal suit or a charcoal jumper. Activated charcoal shows up in water filters, face masks and tablets for an upset stomach. Do not mix charcoal up with coal: coal is dug out of the ground, charcoal is made from wood in a slow, starved fire. It burns hotter and cleaner than raw wood, which is why the barbecue takes charcoal and not logs.
1nounmaterialBlack carbon left when wood is burned slowly without much air.
“He piled the charcoal into the barbecue and lit it.”
2nounstickA stick of this material used for drawing, or a drawing made with it.
“The portrait was done in charcoal.”
3adjectivecolourVery dark grey, close to black.
“He wore a charcoal suit and a white shirt.”
Charcoal is Middle English charcole, built from charren, 'to change or turn', and cole, 'coal'. Charcoal is turned coal: wood changed into something that burns like coal. The first half of the word is a verb almost nobody uses any more, hiding in plain sight.
Old English
cierran — to change, turn
Middle English
charcole
English, today
charcoal
Built from
From Middle English charcole, from charren (“to change, turn”) + cole (“coal”), from Old English cierran (“to change, turn”) + col (“coal”). by surface analysis, en + char + coal.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA