Also 7–9 coak, 8 coake, cowke. [Known only from the 17th c., when classed by Ray as a North-country word. Possibly the same as the northern COLK sb. (also spelt coke) a core, coke being viewed as the hard core of the coal left after other parts have been consumed. The early use of the word as an individual name with pl. coaks, cokes, would agree with this. (Thence also mod.F. coke pl. cokes.) Cf. for both sense and form, the following, which appears to combine the senses of core and cinder.
1878. Cumbrld. Gloss. (E. D. S.), Cowk, the core. ‘It’s badly burnt lime, it’s nought but cowks.’]
1. The solid substance left after mineral coal has been deprived by dry distillation of its volatile constituents, being a form of carbon of more compact texture, but with more impurities, than the charcoal obtained by a similar process from wood.
† a. with a and plural. Obs.
1679. Plot, Staffordsh. (1686), 128. The coal thus prepared [by charring] they call Coaks.
1785. Trans. R. Soc. Edin. (1788), I. 241. That species of coal … burns like coaks, without flame or smoak.
1795. J. Aikin, Manchester, 314. Beds of cokes or cinders have been discovered.
b. as a substance: no plural.
1669. Worlidge, Syst. Agric. (1681), 323. Coke is Pit-Coal or Sea-coal burned or converted into the nature of Charcoal.
1674. Ray, N. C. Words, Coke, Pit-coal or Sea-cole charred: It is now become a word of general use.
1729. Martyn, in Phil. Trans., XXXVI. 32. Some Cowke (or Cinders of Pit-coal).
1782. Specif. H. H. Conway’s Patent, No. 1310. Coal … not wasted or consumed, but turned into a useful cinder, generally called coake.
1787. Fordyce, in Phil. Trans., LXXVII. 312. Coak, or pit-coal charred, that is, burnt till no smoak arises.
1854. Ronalds & Richardson, Chem. Technol. (ed. 2), I. 104. Coals may be subdivided with reference to the production of coke into … the coking and non-coking.
2. attrib. and Comb., as coke-like adj.; coke-crusher, -furnace, -miner, -oven; coke-tower, a high tower filled with coke, used as a condenser, in the manufacture of hydrochloric acid.
1816. J. Smith, Panorama Sci. & Art, II. 565. Prepared with coke-fuel.
1871. Tyndall, Fragm. Sc. (ed. 6), I. ii. 48. The images of the two coke points.
1884. Pall Mall Gaz., 25 Jan., 3/2. The coke-miners at Connellsville, Pennsylvania, have come to the conclusion that some Hungarians recently consigned to that district ‘must go.’
