coalface
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
That’s where the drill meets the coalface, so to speak.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 5, 2026
Since the late 1980s, he has been at the coalface of psychedelic counterculture.
From Salon ● Mar. 8, 2024
"But when you drill down more deeply into the figures, you see more of what we are finding at the coalface, such as an improvement in demand for smaller houses and flats."
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2021
But he saw his future with the union, and to lead it, he had to respect the rules requiring time near the coalface.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 6, 2021
After a lunch of milled corn and salted cabbage, the exhausted children, their faces and clothes covered in coal dust, headed back to the coalface, carrying candles in the ink-black mine.
From "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" by Blaine Harden
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
