Coke

How to spell coke

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce coke

What does coke mean?

1. nounA hard, porous fuel made by heating coal in the absence of air, used especially in smelting iron.
2. nounAn informal name for a cola soft drink, often referring to the Coca-Cola brand.

Coke in a sentence

• The old foundry burned coke to reach the high temperatures needed for casting.

• She ordered a burger and a large coke at the diner.

• The museum explains how coke replaced raw coal in the iron industry.

• The fridge was stocked with cans of coke for the party.

Where does coke come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

In its oldest sense, that of a solid fuel, coke is recorded in English from the 1600s, originally as a northern English and Midlands dialect word spelled in forms such as 'colke' or 'cowke'. The likeliest source is a dialect term meaning the core or central part of something, the idea being the dense residue left behind once coal has been baked to drive off its gases. From the eighteenth century onward coke became central to ironmaking, since the purified fuel burned hotter and cleaner than raw coal. The two other common modern senses are quite separate in origin: the informal name for a cola drink is simply a clipping of the trademark Coca-Cola (itself named for the coca leaf and the kola nut), while the slang use for cocaine is a shortening of that drug's own name. All three meanings happen to land on the same short, phonetic spelling, which is why the word itself is rarely misspelled.

How the word is built

• coke (a single root, of uncertain northern English dialect origin, perhaps from 'colk' meaning the core of something)