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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A black, porous, carbonaceous material, 85 to 98 percent carbon, produced by the destructive distillation of wood and used as a fuel, filter, and absorbent.
  2. n. A drawing pencil or crayon made from this material.
  3. n. A drawing executed with such a pencil or crayon.
  4. n. A dark grayish brown to black or dark purplish gray.
  5. v. To draw, write, or blacken with a black, carbonaceous material.
  6. v. To charbroil.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. Coal made by subjecting wood to a process of smothered combustion; more generally, the carbonaceous residue of vegetable, animal, or combustible mineral substances which have been subjected to smothered combustion. Wood-charcoal is used as fuel and in the manufacture of gunpowder, and, from its power of absorbing gases, as a disinfectant and also as a filter. The different kinds of charcoal are employed for many purposes in the arts. See carbon and coal.
  2. n. A pencil of charcoal, used by artists.
  3. To blacken, write, or draw with charcoal; execute in charcoal: as, to charcoal one's eyebrows.
  4. To suffocate with the fumes of charcoal.

Wiktionary

  1. n. Impure carbon obtained by heating wood or other organic matter in the absence of oxygen.
  2. n. A stick of black carbon material used for drawing.
  3. n. A drawing made with charcoal.
  4. n. A very dark gray colour.
  5. adj. Of a dark gray colour.
  6. v. To draw with charcoal
  7. v. To cook over charcoal

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. Impure carbon prepared from vegetable or animal substances; esp., coal made by charring wood in a kiln, retort, etc., from which air is excluded. It is used for fuel and in various mechanical, artistic, and chemical processes.
  2. n. Finely prepared charcoal in small sticks, used as a drawing implement.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. of a very dark grey
  2. n. a drawing made with a stick of black carbon material
  3. n. a carbonaceous material obtained by heating wood or other organic matter in the absence of air
  4. n. a very dark grey color
  5. n. a stick of black carbon material used for drawing
  6. v. draw, trace, or represent with charcoal

Etymologies

  1. Middle English charcol : char (perhaps from Old French charbon, from Latin carbō; see carbon) + col, charcoal, coal; see coal.

Examples

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‘charcoal’ has been looked up 1416 times, loved by 2 people, added to 40 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 15.