charcoal

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“
You may say that the charcoal is actually dissolving in the air round about; and if that were perfectly pure charcoal, which we can easily prepare, there would be no residue whatever.

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Definitions (22)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (6)

  1. noun 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. noun A drawing pencil or crayon made from this material.
  3. noun A drawing executed with such a pencil or crayon.
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Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

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

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Early modern English charcole, also charke-cole (see below), from Middle English charcole, charkole, probably a contraction of *charkcole, from charken, modern English chark, creak, crack (chark being ult. a variant of crack), + cole, coal (like Middle Dutch krick-kool, later krik-kool, plural krick-kolen, charcoal, from kricken, = English crick, creak, + kool = English coal), the verb being used attributively, in qualification of the noun, with reference to the creaking or clinking of the coals in their friction against one another (cf. clinker, a cinder, named for a like reason; cf. also English dial, chark, cherk, a cinder, a piece of charcoal, prob. due to the compound), or to their cracking or crackling in the fire: see chark and coal. Hence, from charcoal analyzed as chark + coal (early modern English charke-cole, as above), but without recognition of the orig. sense of chark (chark), the new verb chark and the noun chark (which cannot be derived directly from chark); or, from charcoal analyzed as char + coal, the new verb char and the noun char equivalent to chark, and now the usual form: see chark, char. In Skeat's view the char- of charcoal is a particular use of Middle English charren, turn (that is, from wood to coal); cf. “Then Nestor broil′d them on the cole-turn′d wood” (Chapman, Odyssey, iii. 623); “But though the whole world turn to coal” (G. Herbert, Vertue); but the Middle English charren, modern English char and its cognates, mean ′turn′ only in ref. to a change of direction (and hence to action), and do not appear ever to have been used with reference to a change of form or substance. See char.
  2. charcoal, n.
 

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/ˈtʃɑrkoʊl/
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