Cinder sb.

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 connection 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.  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. Ibid. (a. 1100), 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.

1730.  Swift, Lady’s Dressing Room (1732), 9 (J.).

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 now, rather 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.  Maundev., 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.  Shaks., Tit. A., II. iv. 37. Sorrow concealed, like an Ouen stopt, Doth burne the hart to Cinders where it is.

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 sb.² 4).

a. 1547.  Surrey, Æneid, IV. (R.). Is there no fayth Preseru’d to the cinders of Sichee?

1577.  trans. 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.  R. J. Sulivan, 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.  Blith, 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 connection 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-heap, -mount; cinder-dropping, -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-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-wench, -woman, a female whose occupation it is to rake cinders from among ashes.

1888.  T. Hardy, Wessex Tales, I. 33. The stranger in *cinder-gray took no notice of this whispered string of observations.

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.

1883.  W. Blaikie, in Harper’s Mag., Nov., 907/1. St. Paul’s School … has a pretty flat of several acres, with a quarter-mile *cinder path.

1885.  Punch, 3 Jan., 4/1. But [life] ’tisn’t all Cinder-path, Charlie, was luck!

1812.  H. & J. Smith, Rej. Addr., xv. (1873), 142. She … opes the door with *cinder-sabled hands.

1876.  Spurgeon, Commenting, 8. Gill was a master *cinder-sifter among the Targums, the Talmuds, [etc.].

1884.  Health Exhib. Catal., 71/2. Acting as a ‘Tidy Betty’ with Cinder-sifter.

1712.  Arbuthnot, John Bull (1755), 32. She … went abroad like a *cynder-wench.

1750.  S. Jenyns, Mod. Fine Lady, Wks. 1790, I. 76.

16[?].  Ess. Satire, in Poems on Aff. State (1699), 186 (J.).