Word.ws English Dictionary

maceral

maceral noun: a component of coal or oil shale.

Noun

maceral (plural macerals)

  1. A component of coal or oil shale.
    • Inertinite, vitrinite and liptinite are macerals.

Forms of maceral

pluralmacerals

Origin of maceral

From Latin mācerō (“macerate”) + -al, after mineral. Coined by British birth control campaigner and paleontologist Marie Stopes in 1935.

Questions about maceral

What does maceral mean?
Maceral means a component of coal or oil shale.
What part of speech is maceral?
Maceral is a noun.
What is the plural of maceral?
The plural of maceral is macerals.

Words near maceral in the dictionary

  1. macellicephalins
  2. maceman
  3. macemen
  4. macer
  5. Macera
  6. maceral
  7. macerals
  8. maceranduba
  9. Maceras
  10. Macerata
  11. macerate

Source and license

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