colliers

Noun

collier (plural colliers)

1. (dated, historical) A person who produces (e.g., digs, mines, gathers) or sells coal (the fossil fuel type), or transports it from underground, from the soil, or from a seashore.
   • The Black Dwarfs wear black jackets and caps, are not handsome like the others, but on the contrary are horridly ugly, with weeping eyes, like blacksmiths and colliers.1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 283

   Synonyms:

   coalminer, coalworker, coalowner, mineowner

2. (dated, historical) A person in the business or occupation of producing (and selling) charcoal.
   • For this reason, the collier took constant care to keep the covering of earth in good order.1957, H.R. Schubert, History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, page 224

   Synonyms:

   charcoal burner

3. A vessel carrying a bulk cargo of coal.
   • By 1830, more than two million tons of coal a year, principally from the North East, arrived in London by coastal collier, and that figure reached three million tons by the 1840s.2021 December 1, Nigel Harris, “St Pancras and King's Cross: 1947”, in RAIL, number 945, page 42

   Synonyms:

   coaler

4. A sailor on such a vessel.
5. (slang) A non-traveller.

See all 8 meanings of collier