cinder

[sin-der]

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noun

a partially or mostly burned piece of coal, wood, etc.

cinders,

any residue of combustion; ashes.
Geology.coarse scoriae erupted by volcanoes.

a live, flameless coal; ember.

Metallurgy.

slag¹(def 1).
a mixture of ashes and slag.

verb (used with object)

to spread cinders on: The highway department salted and cindered the icy roads.

Archaic. to reduce to cinders.

verb (used without object)

to spread cinders on a surface, as a road or sidewalk: My neighbor began cindering as soon as the first snowflake fell.

Origin of cinder

before 900; Middle English synder, Old English sinder slag; cognate with German Sinter, Old Norse sindr; c- (for s-) < French cendre ashes

Related formscin·der·y, cin·der·ous, adjectivecin·der·like, adjective

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Related Words for cinders

ember, soot, clinker

Examples from the Web for cinders

Contemporary Examples of cinders

I was determined for this to happen, but his mother thwarted my efforts and had him burnt to cinders in the US instead.
Sid Didn't Kill Nancy
Malcolm McLaren
February 4, 2009

Historical Examples of cinders

At the lower end it was black and hard and broken like cinders.
Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae
Jennie Hall
Been high and low, on the chance of finding some hope of saving any cinders from the fire.
Little Dorrit
Charles Dickens
Before the stove the cinders of the previous winter still lay in a heap.
His Masterpiece
Emile Zola
At length the stew began to simmer on a fire covered with cinders.
L'Assommoir
Emile Zola
We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs.
Nature
Ralph Waldo Emerson

British Dictionary definitions for cinders

cinder

noun

a piece of incombustible material left after the combustion of coal, coke, etc; clinker

a piece of charred material that burns without flames; ember

Also called: sinter any solid waste from smelting or refining

(plural) fragments of volcanic lava; scoriae

verb

(tr) rare to burn to cinders

Derived Formscindery, adjective

Word Origin for cinder

Old English sinder; related to Old Norse sindr, Old High German sintar, Old Slavonic sedra stalactite

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for cinders

cinder

Old English sinder "dross of iron, slag," from Proto-Germanic *sendra- "slag" (cf. Old Saxon sinder "slag, dross," Old Norse sindr, Middle Low German and Middle Dutch sinder, Dutch sintel, Old High German sintar, German Sinter), from PIE root *sendhro- "coagulating fluid" (cf. Old Church Slavonic sedra "cinder").

Initial s- changed to c- under influence of unrelated French cendre "ashes," from Latin cinerem (nominative cinis) "ashes," from or related to Greek konis "dust" (see incinerate). The French word also apparently shifted the sense of the English one to "small piece of burnt coal" (16c.). Volcanic cinder cone is recorded from 1849.

Idioms and Phrases with cinders

cinder

see burned to a cinder.