coke

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to become coke

   petroleum oils coke after distillation

2. 2
   noun

   Solid residue from roasting coal in a coke oven; used principally as a fuel and in the production of steel and formerly as a domestic fuel.

   The plant should produce approximately 550,000 tons of screened blast furnace coke per year.

3. 3
   verb

   To add deleterious carbon deposits as a byproduct of combustion.

   In kerolox engines, some of the fuel flow cokes in the engine's cooling passages over time, requiring thorough cleaning prior to reuse.

4. 4
   noun

   A bottle, glass or can of Coca-Cola or a cola-based soft drink.

   The waiter came up, and I ordered a Coke for her—she didn't drink—and a Scotch and soda for myself, but the sonuvabitch wouldn't bring me one, so I had a Coke, too.

5. 5
   noun

   street names for cocaine

6. 6
   noun

   carbon fuel produced by distillation of coal

7. 7
   verb

   To produce coke from coal.

8. 8
   verb

   To turn into coke.

Etymology

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…