Word.ws English Dictionary

sell coals to Newcastle

sell coals 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 coals to Newcastle

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

Questions about sell coals to Newcastle

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

Words near sell coals to Newcastle in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sell coals 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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