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Glite Dictionary
sea coal

sea coal

9.9
A fine dark powder from coal that workers put on molds when they pour hot metal
  • noun
  • Archaic
translation icon : carbón marino
  • When producing castings, using sea coal can enhance the quality of the final product.

Examples

  • The small bricks of sea coal had burned to ash, and the room was growing cold.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • In the metal foundry, they used sea coal to provide a strong facing for the molds.

  • The workers started the furnace with sea coal, ensuring it reached the right temperature quickly.

Synonyms

bituminous coal
vssea coal
  • Specialized
1 6.6

A soft black coal that burns easily and makes a smoky yellow flame

is pulverized and used as a facing in metal foundries rather than general fuel
soft coal
vssea coal
  • Specialized
6.1

A dark fuel that burns easily and makes a lot of smoke

is pulverized and used as a facing in metal foundries rather than general fuel

Surface Forms

sea coal singular
sea coals plural

Morphology

sea + coal

The compound 'sea coal' does not transparently mean something like 'coal by the sea' in the technical foundry sense; its specialized meaning (pulverized bituminous coal used as a facing) is historically/technically specific and not deducible from 'sea' + 'coal'. A B1 learner who knows the constituent words would likely infer a geographic or source relation (coal from the sea or carried by sea) rather than the technical pulverized material, so the expression is opaque.

Etymology

Sea coal may come from people collecting soft black coal that washed up from the sea or was brought in by ships. Those lumps were easy to grind into a 'powder' used as a 'facing' in metal workshops, so the name came to mean powdered bituminous coal used in foundries.