Collier

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈkɒlɪə(ɹ)/

Definitions

1. A worker who mines coal from underground ; a vessel designed to transport coal by sea or river
2. An individual employed in extracting coal from mines ; a ship specifically used for carrying coal cargo
3. Someone who works in the coal mining industry ; a type of ship built to carry bulk coal loads

Etymology: The word "collier" first meant someone who made or sold charcoal, not someone who dug coal. Its Old English ancestor, a form reconstructed as "colere", belonged to the charcoal trade, and it was built from "coal" with the agent suffix "-ier", so the name originally described a worker who handled the fuel that was burned to make heat. Charcoal was the everyday fuel of the time, so the job was a familiar one. Over the Middle English period the word shifted. Its spelling changed to forms like "colier" and "colyer", and its reference moved from the charcoal maker toward the people who worked the coal itself as mining grew in importance. The change followed the rise of mined coal as a fuel, so the trade name moved from the product being burned to the product being dug. The sense of a ship built to carry bulk coal developed later from the same root, and it kept the older link to the fuel trade: a collier is a vessel defined by what it hauls rather than by how it is powered.

Synonyms: miner, coalman, coal carrier, coal merchant, fossil fuel worker