Word.ws English Dictionary

at the coal face

at the coal face prepositional phrase: directly engaged in the operations of a business, rather than in a hands off, managerial position.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (UK, idiomatic) Directly engaged in the operations of a business, rather than in a hands off, managerial position.
    Synonyms:
    in the trenches, where the rubber meets the road

Synonyms of at the coal face

Origin of at the coal face

From being in a coal mine, at the face where the mining is actually occurring, especially in dark, cramped, dirty, hazardous conditions. Compare front line and trenches, of similar formation.

Questions about at the coal face

What does at the coal face mean?
At the coal face means directly engaged in the operations of a business, rather than in a hands off, managerial position.
What part of speech is at the coal face?
At the coal face is a prepositional phrase.

Words near at the coal face in the dictionary

  1. at the bank
  2. at the best
  3. at the best of times
  4. at the bottom of
  5. at the bottom of the pile
  6. at the coal face
  7. at the corner
  8. at the cost of
  9. at the disposal of
  10. at the door
  11. at the door of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: at the coal face (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-at the coal face.ogg.

Cite this entry: “at the coal face.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/at_the_coal_face. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.