Word.ws English Dictionary

durain

durain noun: a type of coal.

Noun

durain (countable and uncountable, plural durains)

  1. A type of coal.
    • The comparative absence of durain in many American coals caused some confusion in early attempts to correlate the English and American systems of nomenclature, since the duller portions of the American coals were at first compared with the English durains, whereas they should have been compared...1954, Wilfrid Francis, “The Coal Series—Terminology, Structure and Petrology”, in Coal: Its Formation and Composition, London: Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd., →OCLC, page 262
    • Bands are visible in the coal from this seam, and there are more durain and fusain parts of coal than vitrain and clairain.1968 September, Ashwini Kumar Singh, “The Source of Coal Samples”, in Desorption Studies of Gases from Coal, Edmonton, Alta.: University of Alberta, →OCLC, “Experimental Studies” section, page 27

Forms of durain

pluraldurains

Origin of durain

From Latin dūrus (“hard”) + -ain in fusain; compare French -ain (“-ane”). Coined by British birth control campaigner and paleontologist Marie Stopes in 1918.

Questions about durain

What does durain mean?
Durain means a type of coal.
What part of speech is durain?
Durain is a noun.
What is the plural of durain?
The plural of durain is durains.

Words near durain in the dictionary

  1. Duracells
  2. durae
  3. durae matres
  4. durag
  5. durags
  6. durain
  7. durains
  8. durak
  9. dural
  10. dural sinus
  11. dural sinuses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: durain (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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