Word.ws English Dictionary

chalkface

chalkface noun: a cliff or quarry exposing chalk, e.g. the White Cliffs of Dover.

Noun

chalkface (plural chalkfaces)

  1. A cliff or quarry exposing chalk, e.g. the White Cliffs of Dover
  2. The environment where teaching is carried out, specifically a school.

Forms of chalkface

pluralchalkfaces

Origin of chalkface

From chalk + face. In the education sense, it is a play on coalface (“place where practical work is done”), after the chalk used on school blackboards, and is believed to have been coined by Ted Wragg for his Times Educational Supplement column.

Questions about chalkface

What does chalkface mean?
Chalkface means a cliff or quarry exposing chalk, e.g. the White Cliffs of Dover.
What part of speech is chalkface?
Chalkface is a noun.
What is the plural of chalkface?
The plural of chalkface is chalkfaces.

Words near chalkface in the dictionary

  1. chalkened
  2. chalkening
  3. chalkens
  4. chalker
  5. chalkers
  6. chalkface
  7. chalkfaces
  8. chalkfish
  9. chalkfishes
  10. chalkhill blue
  11. chalkhill blues

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chalkface (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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Cite this entry: “chalkface.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chalkface. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.