coals

Word family

• coal
  nounB1
• coal
  verbC1
• coaly
  adjectiveC2
• coalfield
  nounC1
• coal-black
  adjectiveC1
• coalmine
  nounB2

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

Coal is one specific kind of fuel — a hard black mineral dug from underground mines. The general word 'fuel' covers anything burned for energy: wood, oil, gas, or coal itself. 'Charcoal' looks similar to coal but comes from a different source: people make it by heating wood with very little air, and it is much lighter and burns cleaner. 'Coke' is a hard grey material made by heating coal in the absence of air to remove impurities; factories use it to make iron and steel. So if you are talking about a black rock mined from the earth, use 'coal'; if you mean the black lumps sold for backyard barbecues, that is 'charcoal'; and if you are describing what goes into a blast furnace, it is likely 'coke.'

Common collocations

Etymology

The word 'coal' comes from Old English 'col,' which originally meant a glowing ember or piece of charcoal. The word goes back to a Proto-Germanic root *kula(n), shared with similar words in other Germanic languages. In medieval times, the word referred to charcoal made from wood. As people in Britain began to mine the black mineral fuel from the ground around the 13th century, they called it 'sea-coal' (because it arrived by ship) to distinguish it from wood charcoal. Over time, the word simply became 'coal.'