Carbonado
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Meat or fish that has been scored and broiled. dated
"Take it vp Villain, and eat it, or I will make thee ſlice the brawnes of thy armes into carbonadoes, and eat them."
- 2 A dark, non-transparent, impure form of polycrystalline diamond (also containing graphite and amorphous carbon) used in drilling.
"At present, equal attention is paid to irregular fragments of a blackish or greyish colour, occasionally of considerable size, also yielded by the washings of diamandiferous sand, which formerly passed unregarded. These fragments are now carefully colected, and have acquired some considerable value in commerce, where they are known under the name of carbonado or carbon. […] An examination of these numerous varieties has made it evident that between carbonado of a simply micro-crystalline texture, and the diamond regularly crystallised in diaphanous octahedrons, there exists an uninterrupted series of intermediate conditions."
- 3 a piece of meat (or fish) that has been scored and broiled wordnet
- 4 an inferior dark diamond used in industry for drilling and polishing wordnet
- 1 To make a carbonado of; to score and broil. also, dated, figuratively, transitive
"Now for the manner of Carbonadoing it is in this ſort, you ſhall firſt take the meate you muſt Carbonadoe and ſcorche it both aboue and belowe; then ſprinkle good ſtore of ſalt vpon it, and baſte it all ouer with ſweet butter melted, […]"
- 2 To cut or hack, as in combat. obsolete, transitive
"Draw you raſcall, you bring letters againſt the King, and take Vanitie the puppets part, againſt the royaltie of her father, draw you rogue or ile ſo carbonado your shankes, […]"
Example
More examples"Take it vp Villain, and eat it, or I will make thee ſlice the brawnes of thy armes into carbonadoes, and eat them."
Etymology
The noun is derived from Spanish carbonada (“carbonized”) (from carbonar (“to carbonize”)) + -ado (suffix forming past participles of regular verbs ending in -ar). Carbonada appears to have been modelled after Italian carbonata (“coal pile; stew of beef in red wine”), from carbone (“coal; charcoal”) (from Latin carbō (“coal; charcoal”), from Proto-Indo-European *ker- (“to burn”)) + -ata. The verb is derived from the noun.
Borrowed from Portuguese carbonado (“carbonized”), probably from carbono (“carbon”) (currently only attested later than carbonado) + -ado (suffix forming adjectives from nouns meaning ‘something or someone who has suffered the action’). Carbono is borrowed from French carbone (“carbon”), from Latin carbō (“coal; charcoal”); for further derivation, see etymology 1.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.