coal

UK/kəʊl/US/koʊl/

nounB1Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,141 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: coals

Coal is the hard black rock that is dug up and burnt for heat. Burn coal, a coal mine, a bag of coal.

It is compressed plant matter from swamps of three hundred million years ago, so burning it releases carbon that has been out of the air since before the dinosaurs. Britain built its industry on it and closed its last deep mine in 2015.

Definitions of coal

1nouncoalThe hard black rock that is dug up and burnt for heat.B1
“He put more coal on the fire to keep the room warm.”

coal is a rock.

Where it comes from

Old English col first meant a glowing ember, from a Germanic root meaning to burn.

Middle English
col
English, today
coal

From Middle English col. From Middle English col, from Old English col, from Proto-West Germanic kol, from Proto-Germanic kulą (“coal”), from Proto-Indo-European ǵwelH- (“to burn, shine”). 2

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

coal in the wild

Vast deposits formed from wetlands called coal forests that covered much of the tropics during the late Carboniferous and early Permian.
Coal
With the invention of the steam engine, coal consumption increased.
Coal
Within the coal mining industry, this type of coal is known for releasing the largest amounts of firedamp, a dangerous mixture of gases that can cause underground explosions.
Bituminous coal
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine.
Coal mining
In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine.
Coal mining

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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