Word.ws English Dictionary

carried coals to Newcastle

carried coals to Newcastle is the simple past and past participle of carry coals to Newcastle.

Meaning of carry coals to Newcastle

Verb

carry coals to Newcastle (third-person singular simple present carries coals to Newcastle, present participle carrying coals to Newcastle, simple past and past participle carried coals to Newcastle)

  1. (idiomatic) To do something that is unneeded or redundant.
    • However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did indubitably conduct a...1851, Herman Melville, chapter 81, in Moby-Dick

Questions about carried coals to Newcastle

What is carried coals to Newcastle the simple past and past participle of?
Carried coals to Newcastle is the simple past and past participle of carry coals to Newcastle.

Words near carried coals to Newcastle in the dictionary

  1. carried a torch
  2. carried a torch for
  3. carried a tune
  4. carried all before one
  5. carried away
  6. carried coals to Newcastle
  7. carried conviction
  8. carried corn
  9. carried everything before one
  10. carried forward
  11. carried interest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: carried coals to Newcastle (page history and authors); carry coals to Newcastle (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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