Coal

How to spell coal

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce coal

What does coal mean?

1. nounA hard black mineral, formed from ancient plant matter, that is burned as fuel.

Coal in a sentence

• The old furnace burned coal to heat the whole building.

• Miners spent long shifts cutting coal deep underground.

Where does coal come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Coal descends from the Old English word col, which originally meant a glowing ember or a piece of burning charcoal rather than the black mineral we picture today. It belongs to a wide Germanic family, with close relatives in Old Norse kol, Old High German kolo, and modern Dutch kool and German Kohle, all pointing back to a shared Germanic root for a piece of burning or charred wood. Only later, as people began digging the fossil mineral out of the ground and burning it, did the word shift to name the black rock that fuelled homes and, eventually, the Industrial Revolution. The older charcoal sense survives in the related word 'collier', a coal worker or coal ship, and in 'charcoal' itself. The simple spelling hides a small trap: the long vowel is written 'oa', which is exactly why it sounds the same as the unrelated words 'cole' (as in coleslaw) and 'kohl' (the dark eye cosmetic).

How the word is built

• coal (from Old English col: glowing ember, burning charcoal)