Word.ws English Dictionary

sell coal to Newcastle

sell coal to Newcastle is the alternative form 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

Forms of sell coal to Newcastle

third-person singular presentsells coal to Newcastle
present participleselling coal to Newcastle
past participlesold coal to Newcastle
pastsold coal to Newcastle

Origin of sell coal to Newcastle

First recorded in 1538.

Questions about sell coal to Newcastle

What is sell coal to Newcastle the alternative form of?
Sell coal to Newcastle is the alternative form of carry coals to Newcastle.

Words near sell coal to Newcastle in the dictionary

  1. sell
  2. sell against the box
  3. sell away
  4. sell bargains
  5. sell by the candle
  6. sell coal to Newcastle
  7. sell coals to Newcastle
  8. sell dearly
  9. sell down
  10. sell down the river
  11. sell freezers to Eskimos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sell coal 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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