collier — English Dictionary

Noun

1. A person in the business or occupation of producing or distributing coal (any of several types of carbon fuel). A person who produces (e.g., digs, mines, gathers) or sells coal (the fossil fuel type), or transports it from underground, from the soil, or from a seashore.

   Usage

   • Dated
   • Historical

   Synonyms

   coalminercoalworkercoalownermineowner

   Examples

   More examples (2)

   The Black Dwarfs wear black jackets and caps, are not handsome like the others, but on the contrary are horridly ugly, with weeping eyes, like blacksmiths and colliers.

   No caps were touched, no curtseys bobbed. The colliers merely stared; the tradesmen lifted their caps to Connie as to an acquaintance, and nodded awkwardly to Clifford; that was all. [...] It was not that she and Clifford were unpopular, they merely belonged to another species altogether from the colliers. Gulf impassable, breach indescribable, such as is perhaps non-existent south of the Trent.

   Near-synonyms: coalminer, coalworker; coalowner, mineowner

2. A person in the business or occupation of producing or distributing coal (any of several types of carbon fuel). A person in the business or occupation of producing (and selling) charcoal.

   Usage

   • Dated
   • Historical

   Synonyms

   charcoal burner

   Examples

   For this reason, the collier took constant care to keep the covering of earth in good order.

3. A vessel carrying a bulk cargo of coal.

   Synonyms

   coaler

   Examples

   More examples (1)

   By 1830, more than two million tons of coal a year, principally from the North East, arrived in London by coastal collier, and that figure reached three million tons by the 1840s.

4. A sailor on such a vessel.

5. A non-traveller.

   Usage

   • Slang
   • used by the traveller community

Noun

1. someone who works in a coal mine

   Synonyms

   coal miner

   Broader terms

   minermineworker