▪ I. cinder, n.
(ˈsɪndə(r))
Forms: 1 sinder, sindor, synder, 5 syn-, cyndyr, cyndre, 5–6 syndre, 5–7 synder, 6 sindar, cindre, zynder, 6–7 sinder, 8 cynder, 6– cinder.
[An erroneous spelling of sinder, OE. sinder (synder) scoria, slag of metal: corresp. to OHG. sintar, sinter, etc., MHG. and mod.G. sinter, ON. sindr (Sw. sinder, Da. sinner) all pointing to an OTeut. *sindro(m. The word has no etymological connexion with F. cendre, L. cinerem ashes, although the notion that it has, has both given rise to the current spelling cinder, and influenced the later sense; cf.
a 1400 Black Bk. Admiralty II. 180 Barils de cendres: (15th c. Eng. transl. barell[is] of syndres.)]
1. a. The refuse or dross thrown off from iron or other metals in the furnace; scoria, slag. (Usually in sing.) Now techn.
forge-cinder, iron slag from a forge or bloomery. mill-cinder, the slag from the puddling furnaces of a rolling-mill.
| a 800 Corpus Gloss. 1808 Scoria, sinder. a 1000 Voc. in Wr.-Wülcker 200/24 Caries, putredo lignorum, uel ferri, sindor. a 1100 Ibid. 336/24 Scorium, synder. 1398 Trevisa Barth. De P.R. xvi. xlv. (Tollem. MS.), Synder is calde Scoria, and is þe filþe of yren þat is clensid þer fro in fyre. c 1440 Promp. Parv. 78 Cyndyr of þe smythys fyre, casuma. 1646 Sir T. Browne Pseud. Ep. ii. iii. 69 In Smiths cinders. 1709 Hearne Collect. II. 170 The Cinders in the Forest of Dean..(of which our best Iron is made) is..the Rough and Offal thrown by in the Romans' time. 1802 Med. Jrnl. VIII. 305 The experiment with finery cinder and charcoal. 1881 Raymond Mining Gloss., Cinder, slag. |
| fig. 1413 Lydg. Pilgr. Sowle iv. xxiii. (1483) 69 Tho that ben founden fyne gold..and tho that ben founden asshes and synder. 1860 Emerson Cond. Life, Consider. Wks. (Bohn) II. 426 ‘Oh,’ he said..‘if there's cinder in the iron, 'tis because there was cinder in the pay.’ |
b. (See
quot.)
| 1874 Knight Dict. Mech., Cinder, a scale of oxide removed in forging. |
2. The residue of a combustible substance,
esp. coal, after it has ceased to flame, and so also, after it has ceased to burn.
a. An ember or piece of glowing coal, or similar substance, which has ceased to flame. (Now merged in b.)
| 1535 Coverdale Isa. xlvii. 14 Strawe..yf it be kindled with fyre..yet it geueth no zynders to warme a man by. 1611 Speed Hist. Gt. Brit. ix. xviii. (1632) 897 The Synders of dissensions..presently brake forth into a more raging flame. a 1745 Swift (J.), If..the fat upon a cinder drops To stinking smoke it turns the flame. Mod. A red-hot cinder fell out and burned the carpet. |
b. esp. A small piece of coal from which the gaseous or volatile constituents have been burnt, but which retains much of the carbon, so that it is capable of further combustion without flame.
| 1530 Palsgr. 205 Cynders of coles, breze. 1679 Plot Staffordsh. (1686) 94 Supplying the furnace..with the Sinder of the Coale (which is the smaller sort of it fallen into the Ashes and gotten from them with a Seive). 1709 Steele Tatler No. 69 ¶8 Employed in sifting Cinders. 1773 Johnson in Boswell xxviii, So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder. 1858 Carlyle Fredk. Gt. (1865) II. vii. v. 286 Painful sifting through mountains of dust and ashes for a poor cinder of a fact here and there. 1867 W. W. Smyth Coal & Coal-mining 2 Coal cinders have been found amid the ruins of several of the Roman stations. |
† c. pl. Coke.
Obs.| 1703 Lond. Gaz. No. 3892/1 An Act for continuing the Duties upon Coles, Culm, and Cynders. |
d. pl. Vaguely used for: Residue of combustion; ashes. Still so used dialectally, though in ordinary language ‘cinders’ are quite distinct from ‘ashes’ or the powdery incombustible residue. Also
fig.| c 1400 Mandeville ix. 101 And there besyden growen trees, that beren fulle faire apples..but whoso breketh hem or cutteth hem in two, he schall fynde with in hem coles and cyndres. 1587 Greene Euphues Censure to Philaut. Wks. (Grosart) VI. 192 Loue that amidst the coldest Cinders of hate had smothered vp litle sparkes of forepassed affection. 1588 Munday in Farr S.P. Eliz. (1845) I. 226 All thy pompe in cinders laide full lowe. 1588 Shakes. Tit. A. ii. iv. 37. 1598 Drayton Heroic Ep. xxiii. 179 And from blacke Sinders, and rude heapes of Stones, Shall gather up the Martyrs sacred bones. 1878 Morley Byron Crit. Misc., Ser. i. 224 The fire, which yet smoulders with abundant life underneath the grey cinders. |
† 3. pl. The ‘ashes’ of a dead body after cremation or (
transf.) decomposition; (see
ash n.2 4).
| a 1547 Surrey æneid iv. (R.), Is there no fayth Preseru'd to the cinders of Sichee? 1577 tr. Bullinger's Decades (1592) 236 He would not haue so much as the very cinders to remaine of so wicked men. 1626 Bacon Sylva §771 In the Coffin..there was nothing to be seen but a little light Cinders about the sides. 1658 Sir T. Browne Hydriot. iii. 16 What virtue yet sleeps in this terra damnata and aged cinders. |
4. Volcanic scoria.
| 1774 Goldsm. Nat. Hist. (1776) I. 101 The volcano ejected cinders. 1794 Sullivan View Nat. I. 66 A stratum of cinders or of pumice stone. 1836 Emerson Nature, Language Wks. (Bohn) II. 152 Like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. |
† 5. Applied to gritty concretions in some soils.
| 1562 Act 5 Eliz. c. 13 §3 Grounds..wherein Gravel, Sand or Cinders is likely to be found. 1577 Harrison England i. xviii, The haie of our low medowes is..full of sandie cinder, which breedeth sundrie diseases in our cattell. 1649 W. Blithe Eng. Improv. Impr. (1653) 137 Which..Lands were so gravelly of nature..yea so exceeding herein, that in many places turned to Sinder (like that the Smith casts forth of his fire, as the corruption of his Iron, Fire, & Coales congealed). |
6. slang. Brandy, whiskey, etc., taken in tea, soda water, or other drink.
| 1873 Slang Dict., Cinder, any liquor used in connexion with soda-water, as to ‘take a soda with a cinder in it’. The cinder may be sherry, brandy, or any other liquor. |
7. attrib. and
Comb., as
cinder-burner,
cinder-fire,
cinder-heap,
cinder-mount,
cinder-shard;
cinder-dropping,
cinder-like adjs., etc.;
cinder-bed, a bed or stratum of cinders;
spec. a quarryman's name for a geological stratum of loose structure in the Middle Purbeck series, consisting chiefly of oyster-shells;
cinder-cone, a cone formed round the mouth of a volcano by debris cast up during eruption;
cinder-fall, ‘the inclined plane on which the melted slag from a blast-furnace descends’;
cinder-frame, a wire frame in front of the tubes of a locomotive engine, to prevent the escape of ignited cinders;
cinder-gray a., ? ashen-gray;
cinder-notch, ‘the hole through which cinder’ or slag ‘is tapped from a furnace’ (Raymond
Mining Gloss.);
cinder-path, a footpath, or running-track, laid with cinders;
cinder-pig, pig-iron made from ores with admixture of ‘cinder’ or slag;
cinder-plate, the iron plate forming the front of a bloomery;
cinder-sabled ppl. a., blackened with cinders;
cinder-sifter, (
a) one who sifts cinders (also
fig.); (
b) a contrivance for sifting dust or ashes from cinders;
cinder-tap = cinder-notch;
cinder-tea, a folk-medicine, made by pouring boiling water on cinders, administered to young children;
cinder track = cinder-path; also
attrib.;
cinder-wench,
-woman, a female whose occupation it is to rake cinders from among ashes.
| 1881 Instr. Census Clerks (1885) 92 Wrought Iron Manufacture:..*Cinder Burner. 1887 P. M{supc}Neill Blawearie 165 Lyle the cinder-burner has been advised to shift from the Howe Colliery to Warlock Hill. 1921 Dict. Occup. Terms (1927) §278 Cinder burner,..slag burner; roasts tap cinder from puddling or blast furnace to make bulldog. |
| 1849 Dana Geol. 354 *Cinder cones in the parts of the Pacific under examination are of various heights, to two thousand feet. 1885 Geikie Geol. (ed. 2) 227 Tuff-Cones, Cinder-Cones. Successive eruptions of fine dust and stones. 1905 Chamberlin & Salisbury Geol. I. 580 The larger portion of the lava blown into the air by the expanding gas-bubbles falls back in the immediate vicinity of the vent and builds up a cinder-cone. 1965 A. Holmes Princ. Physical Geol. xi. 314 An ash or cinder cone is built up when a sufficient supply of tephra is erupted. |
| 1868 Joynson Metals 111 Cast-iron, which may require to be annealed in too large a quantity to render the expense of charcoal very agreeable, may be heated in a *cinder fire. |
| 1888 T. Hardy Wessex Tales, The second stranger, the man in ‘*cinder-gray’. |
| 1855 Carlyle Misc. (1857) IV. 361 Riddled from the big, Historical *cinder-heaps. |
| 1575 Gascoigne Flowers Wks. 83 Thus all in flames I *sinderlike consume. |
| 1869 Echo 9 Oct., For the purpose of conveying the cinder from the furnaces there is a fixed engine which draws it up an incline to the ‘*cinder mount’. |
| 1881 Raymond Mining Gloss., Cinder-tap, *Cinder-notch, the hole through which cinder is tapped from a furnace. |
| 1838 Dickens Let. 1 Nov. (1965) I. 447 Miles of *cinder-paths and blazing furnaces and roaring steam engines. 1883 Harper's Mag. Nov. 907/2 St. Paul's School..has..a quarter-mile cinder path. 1885 Punch 3 Jan. 4/1 Life..isn't all Cinder-path, Charlie. |
| 1812 H. & J. Smith Rej. Addr. xv. (1873) 142 She..opes the door with *cinder-sabled hands. |
| a 1918 W. Owen Poems (1963) 91 And I saw white bones in the *cinder-shard. |
| 1820 Keats Let. Aug. (1931) II. 561 Nothing is so bad as want of health—it makes one envy Scavengers and *Cinder-sifters. 1861 Mrs. Beeton Bk. Househ. Managem. 31, 1 Cinder sifter..1s. 3d. 1876 Spurgeon Commenting 8 Gill was a cinder-sifter among the Targums, the Talmuds, etc. 1884 Health Exhib. Catal. 71/2 Acting as a ‘Tidy Betty’ with Cinder-sifter. |
| 1881 Cinder-tap [see cinder-notch]. |
| 1887 Shearman Athletics & Football 182 Nearly all the regular paths are ‘*cinder tracks’. 1893 Outing (U.S.) XXI. 135/2 There is a sharp line dividing cinder-track athletes from cross-country runners. 1917 C. Mathewson Sec. Base Sloan xi. 143 It had..a cinder track one-eighth mile in circumference. 1953 X. Fielding Stronghold iv. ii. 263 There was no-one in sight on this natural cinder-track. |
| 1712 Arbuthnot John Bull (1755) 32 She..went abroad like a *cynder-wench. 1786 Lond. Mag. Oct. 546 She..envies every cinder-wench she meets. |
| 16.. Ess. Satire (J.), To find it out's the *cinder-woman's trade. |
▸
cinderblock n. N. Amer. † (a) a brass or cast iron slab forming part of a blast-furnace and containing holes through which slag is discharged during iron smelting (
obs.);
(b) a large building block made of slag (usually from iron smelting or coal burning) and cement; a breeze-block.
| 1868 Sci. Amer. 9 Dec. 382/2 A blast furnace with a closed breast where the slag is discharged through an opening or openings cooled by water... The slag discharge piece or *cinder block. 1869 H. S. Osborn Metall. Iron & Steel ii. xii. 626 Probably the use of the Lurmann cinder-block, which has been adopted at some of the works, will be found especially advantageous in raising the product of the very large furnaces. 1922 Oneonta (N.Y.) Daily Star 20 Jan. 7/5 Cinder blocks, the invention of Frank Cordery of New York, are being used in the construction of a $100,000 residence in New Rochelle, New York. 1995 Home & School Apr. 42/1 Lunch hour is nearly over at Wellington Junior High School, a blue-and-white cinderblock building on Edmonton's north side. |
▪ II. cinder, v. (
ˈsɪndə(r))
Also 5
scin-.
[f. prec.] trans. To burn to a cinder, reduce to cinders. Also
fig. Hence
cindered,
cindering ppl. adjs.| 1430 Lydg. Chron. Troy ii. xii, This citie Shulde into scindred asshes tourned be. 1557 North tr. Gueuara's Diall Pr. 86 b, His graued ghost and cindred moulde. c 1575 Gascoigne Fruites Warre xvi, Where sword and cindring flame Consume. 1628 Feltham Resolves i. xxxvi. (R.), Untold griefs choak, cynder the heart. 1846 C. G. Prowett æschylus' Prometh. Bound 18 His brawny force All thunder-scathed and cindered. 1869 E. Garrett Crust & Cake xxxvi. (1871) 447 Burnt up..like a cindered bannock. |