A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1323 entries
cinder
A cinder is a piece of burned material that has stopped flaming but has not gone to ash, still holding fuel and still able to catch. In volcanology, the word means something related but distinct: a fragment of frothy lava thrown into the air, cooled full of gas bubbles, and landing as a light rough clinker. A cinder cone is a hill built entirely of these, piled at the steepest angle loose material will hold.
Etymology
This is a case of two words getting welded together. Old English had sinder, meaning slag or the dross left in a forge. French had cendre, ash, from Latin. English speakers heard the French word, recognized their own, and let the spelling change from s to c to match, even though the two are unrelated. The modern word carries both senses at once: the clinker from the forge and the ash from the fire.
Notes
Cinder cones are the commonest volcanic landform on earth and the simplest, usually built in a single eruption and then finished forever. Sunset Crater in Arizona and Parícutin in Mexico both went up in a matter of months. Parícutin is the one that started in a cornfield in 1943 with a farmer watching.