Seacoal

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    coal from inside the sea: mineral coal that washes up from the sea onto beaches, from which it can be collected and sold. uncountable

    "October 9, 1677. "John Thompson of Setauket has a permit to go to Flushing and other parts of Long Island to search for sea-coal, of which he hath probable information.""

  2. 2
    coal from across the sea: mineral coal, as opposed to charcoal, in a time and place in which the former arrived by ship and the latter arrived overland (such as London in Elizabethan times). Southern-England, historical, uncountable

    "[…] and then of Sea-Coal and other necessary Fewel, fit for the working or melting of these Metalls; […]"

  3. 3
    coal to be used at sea: a certain class of mineral coal, especially suitable for the steam engines of ships at sea and locomotives. US, historical, uncountable
  4. 4
    coal to be used at sea: a certain class of mineral coal, especially suitable for the steam engines of ships at sea and locomotives.; Such coal used in foundry practice, intermixed with foundry sand or applied in a layer on its face, to modify the behavior of the molten metal. US, historical, uncountable

Example

More examples

"October 9, 1677. "John Thompson of Setauket has a permit to go to Flushing and other parts of Long Island to search for sea-coal, of which he hath probable information.""

Etymology

From sea + coal.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.