Meanings
- alternativeuncountableAlternative form of coal-smoke.
On my return, I stopped and pulled down the window. A blast of icy air laced with coalsmoke hit me in the face.
2015, Phyll MacDonald-Ross with I. D. Roberts, Bandaging the Blitz, 1938-42, London: Sphere, →ISBN, page 2703 more examples
During the long wait in the station another smell assailed our nostrils; a compound of coalsmoke, fish, oranges and other fruit and vegetables. […] Out in the village there was a new smell: peatsmoke, a much more romantic smell than coalsmoke – the railway was now far away.
1988, A[rthur] Bryson Gerrard, “Scotland”, in Butterflies & Coalsmoke, Oxford: Susan Abrahams, →ISBN, pages 108–109The sunrise of Hopkins—with “brown brink” suggesting a cloud of industrial smoke—presents the streaks and colors of the sun, seen through the air full of coalsmoke, as an image of the Holy Ghost.
1990, Robert Pinsky, “Skies of the City: A Poetry Reading”, in Gene W[illiam] Ruoff, editor, The Romantics and Us: Essays on Literature and Culture, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, →ISBN, pages 175–176They are city-dwellers, men whose lives pass in the shadows of buildings, whose lungs are silted with coalsmoke, and few will ever cross the sea.
2017, Sarah Moss, “London, summer 1878”, in Signs for Lost Children, New York, N.Y.: Europa Editions, →ISBN, page 16
Cite this entry
coalsmoke. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/coalsmoke
“coalsmoke.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/coalsmoke. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “coalsmoke,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/coalsmoke.
Source: coalsmoke on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.