Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The stem of a grass or similar plant.
  • noun Waste from anthracite coal mines, consisting of fine coal, coal dust, and dirt.
  • noun Carboniferous shale.
  • noun Inferior anthracite coal.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In botany, the jointed and usually hollow stem of grasses.
  • noun Coal-dust; slack; refuse of coal.
  • noun In mining, a soft or slaty and inferior kind of anthracite, especially that occurring in Devonshire, England.
  • noun The name given by some geologists to a series of rocks which occupy the position of the Carboniferous limestone (see carboniferous), but which, instead of being developed in the form of massive calcareous beds, are made up of slates, sandstones, and conglomerates, and occasional beds of coal, usually of inferior quality.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) The stalk or stem of grain and grasses (including the bamboo), jointed and usually hollow.
  • noun Mineral coal that is not bituminous; anthracite, especially when found in small masses.
  • noun The waste of the Pennsylvania anthracite mines, consisting of fine coal, dust, etc., and used as fuel.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun waste coal, used as a poor quality fuel; slack.
  • noun anthracite, especially when found in small masses
  • noun botany the stem of a plant, especially of grass or sedge

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun stem of plants of the Gramineae

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin culmus, stalk.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English colme, coal dust, perhaps from Old English col, coal.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Perhaps related to coal. Perhaps from Welsh cwlm ("knot or tie"), applied to this species of coal, which is much found in balls or knots in some parts of Wales: compare Old English culme.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Borrowed from Latin culmus.

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Examples

  • Variations in the diameter of the shaft (called a culm), in the prominence of the nodes, and in the rate of tapering at the end of the culm all make certain applications difficult.

    Chapter 7 1977

  • The only way to use the beastly stuff was to mix it with wet, salt mud from the river into what the country people call culm -- then you cut it into blocks, or make balls of it, and it hardens.

    Back to Billabong Mary Grant Bruce 1918

  • From the mountainous piles of refuse, of "culm," barefooted children, nearly as black as their miner fathers, were tramping homeward with burdens of coal that they had gleaned from the waste.

    Derrick Sterling A Story of the Mines Kirk Monroe

  • The method of assaying the black tin is a dry one, and consists of mixing it with "culm," and submitting it in a black-lead crucible to the highest temperature of a wind furnace.

    A Text-book of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. Cornelius Beringer 1886

  • Last we saw, the burning culm dumps had disappeared from the Scranton area so there's no need to have their existence mentioned on the Internet.

    The Pacific Garbage Patch as a tourist destination? 2010

  • The local people have traditionally gathered the mountain's natural resources, firewood and dry culm, snow, sulfur and pumice, wildflowers and colored soils for ornament, pastured their flocks and hived their bees there in summer and till the mid 20th century, made charcoal.

    Teide National Park, Spain 2008

  • Remember when I told you about the culm banks after a snowstorm?

    BLOWN AWAY! JOAN HIATT HARLOW 2007

  • Remember when I told you about the culm banks after a snowstorm?

    BLOWN AWAY! JOAN HIATT HARLOW 2007

  • Remember when I told you about the culm banks after a snowstorm?

    BLOWN AWAY! JOAN HIATT HARLOW 2007

  • Remember when I told you about the culm banks after a snowstorm?

    BLOWN AWAY! JOAN HIATT HARLOW 2007

Comments

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  • Life ‘round the black mines took its toll.

    Kids played with survival their goal.

    To dig in the culm

    Would sicken and dull ‘em

    But yielded a few lumps of coal.

    March 1, 2019