BS: Regional dialect - coal dust = 'slack' ?

27 Mar 25 - 02:57 PM (#4219921)
Subject: BS: Regional dielect - coal dust = 'slack' ?
From: Mr Red

Here's a question for the Geordies, Makems and Sand Dancers:

What do the locals call coal dust - colloquially?

Other UK regions are avaliable - to participate. TIA.

I asked a true knowledgeable Geordie and he did not know.
It involves a joke I will put on the joke thread just to wind up certain "opinions" & that will maybe evoke more comment on regional words. see the Joke

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27 Mar 25 - 03:11 PM (#4219923)
Subject: RE: BS: Regional dielect - coal dust = 'slack' ?
From: Backwoodsman

Im my childhood in the Lincolnshire Backwoods, ‘slack’ was low-grade (therefore ‘cheap’) coal which burned very slowly. My parents used slack to ‘bank’ the fire at night, and it would still have burning embers in the morning.

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27 Mar 25 - 04:10 PM (#4219926)
Subject: RE: BS: Regional dielect - coal dust = 'slack' ?
From: DaveRo

See also Nutty Slack

Not 'dust' and not just up north.

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28 Mar 25 - 04:56 AM (#4219942)
Subject: RE: BS: Regional dialect - coal dust = 'slack' ?
From: Roger the Skiffler

In Birmingham in the 40s/50s we called coal dust slack. One of my childhood jobs when money was tight to go down to the cellar and sweep up anything left to use on the fire. When I lived in Cardiff in the early 1960s my landlady called it small coal.
RtS

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28 Mar 25 - 03:45 PM (#4219978)
Subject: RE: BS: Regional dialect - coal dust = 'slack' ?
From: Mr Red

interesting.

Fine bits of coal and dust was called slack.

Certain lumps that didn't burn well reduced to very white lumps of ash. As opposed to normal coal that disintegrated as it fell to ash. We called those lumps "bats".

When I was installing a weighing machine at the Grimethorpe Colliery they scooped up the dust on wet days and sold it to power station for their fluidised beds. Such power stations had to crush coal into small pieces anyway. Fluidised beds were coal infused with air. It made it easier to transport to the furnace and with the extra surface surrounded by air area it burned more efficiently.

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02 Apr 25 - 10:29 PM (#4220206)
Subject: RE: BS: Regional dialect - coal dust = 'slack' ?
From: Ross Campbell

Central Scotland (Lanarkshire coalfield) 1950s. The fine particles from the coal-cellar would be used to "slack" or "smoor" (smother) the fire last thing at night. If done just right, the fire could be re-kindled from the embers the following morning.

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03 Apr 25 - 08:45 AM (#4220226)
Subject: RE: BS: Regional dialect - coal dust = 'slack' ?
From: Fred

Slack, as I recall it (Sth Lincolnshire) was a coal/water mix.

Small bits of coal would simply fall through the grate. To prevent this, people would put the small coal pieces in a bucket, add water and mix it into a kind of thick coal paste that could then be put on top of logs or larger lumps of coal. They called it "slack".

Fred

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