coke

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A glass, bottle, or can of cola, especially Coca-Cola.

   She ordered a coke with her burger.

2. 2
   noun

   A solid black fuel made by heating coal, used mainly in making steel.

   The furnace burned tonnes of coke each day.

3. 3
   noun

   An informal name for the illegal drug cocaine.

   He was arrested for selling coke.

The origin is not certain. The OED says it is first attested in 1669. The MED has an earlier attestation in the related sense of "charcoal" in 1430: Middle English coke. This may be the same word as colk (“core”) (perhaps from the notion that coke is the core of the material left after it burning), from Old English *colc (“hole, well”), from Proto-West Germanic *kolk, from Proto-Germanic *kulukaz (“a hollow, depression”), from Proto-Indo-European *g(ʷ)el- (“to swallow, devour; gullet”). If so, cognate with Saterland Frisian Kolk (“maelstrom, depression, whirlpool”), West Frisian kolk (“maelstr…

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