Burn coal is a racist slur used in white supremacist online communities to denigrate white women who date Black men. Worth a serious conversation if your teen encounters or uses it. If your kid uses it constantly, ask them where they first heard it, not to police their speech but to understand which online community they are in. Most slang of this kind moves through TikTok and group chats, so seeing it in your child's vocabulary just means they are plugged into normal teen internet culture.
burn coal
(slang, derogatory, offensive) Of a nonblack person, usually a woman, to seek sexual relationships with black people, usually men.
ˈbɝn ˈkoʊlDocumented since 1940s1940sBoomerhistoricalCurrent321 viewsLast reviewed Jun 29, 2026＋ Add a definition
Etymology timeline
Born ~1946 · 1 year of recorded use20th centurySee decade cohort →
Seen in the wild
BlueskyMay 2026
Of course it’s the hottest you fetid felon..you force us to burn coal and use gasoline, while you wreck windmills and solar panels
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Firecrawl: Germany goes back to burning coal as its energy crisis deepens - NPR
The plant was scheduled to shut down for good this fall, but due to the German energy crisis, it's one of several coal plants nationwide that will continue to burn coal to get the country through the winter.
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Firecrawl: Coal - Wikipedia
Power stations that burn coal also consume large quantities of water.
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Firecrawl: For The Few Who Heat Homes With Coal, It's Still King - NPR
He's among the fewer than 130,000 households left in the United States that burn coal to heat their homes. **Jeff Brady/NPR** **hide caption** **toggle caption** Jeff Brady/NPR John Ord of Susquehanna, Pa., loads 40-p…
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Definitions
GlobalOffensive
#1·Apr 26, 2026Global
(slang, derogatory, offensive) Of a nonblack person, usually a woman, to seek sexual relationships with black people, usually men.
Origin: First use appears c. 1946. See cite below. Origin information sourced from Wiktionary contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0).
For parents
Burn coal is a racist slur used in white supremacist online communities to denigrate white women who date Black men. Worth a serious conversation if your teen encounters or uses it. If your kid uses it constantly, ask them where they first heard it, not to police their speech but to understand which online community they are in. Most slang of this kind moves through TikTok and group chats, so seeing it in your child's vocabulary just means they are plugged into normal teen internet culture.
For ESL learners
Burn coal is an extremely offensive racist phrase used in white supremacist online communities. Use only when critically discussing such ideology. Formal equivalent: there is none in mainstream English. Common non-native mistake: encountering it casually online without recognising the white supremacist context. Avoid in all settings. Read or listen to the word in context several times before trying it yourself; the right register is harder to learn than the dictionary meaning.
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Global
#2·Apr 26, 2026Global
(literally) To burn coal, usually for heat.
Heard in the wild
“Of course it’s the hottest you fetid felon..you force us to burn coal and use gasoline, while you wreck windmills and solar panels”
— Bluesky· May 2026“The plant was scheduled to shut down for good this fall, but due to the German energy crisis, it's one of several coal plants nationwide that will continue to burn coal to get the country through the winter.”
“Power stations that burn coal also consume large quantities of water.”
“He's among the fewer than 130,000 households left in the United States that burn coal to heat their homes. **Jeff Brady/NPR** **hide caption** **toggle caption** Jeff Brady/NPR John Ord of Susquehanna, Pa., loads 40-pound bags of anthracite coal into his car.”
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For specific readers
Why is this section here?
Slang is read by different audiences for very different reasons. The For parents view re-explains the term in plain, non-judgemental language so a caregiver can understand what their child means without needing the surrounding subculture. The For English learners view focuses on register (when it's safe to use), formal alternatives, and common mistakes — what a textbook won't teach you.
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🗺️About Regional & Other slang
Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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Other words near "burn coal" (B)
burlapburlin'Burlington BertieBurlington bunburn bookburn breadburn downburnerburnhamburnieburninateburning-ghat
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