CARRY COALS TO NEWCASTLE Definition & Meaning

carry coals to Newcastle

To do something that is obviously superfluous; Newcastle is a city in northeast England where coal is mined: “Karen wanted to give Dad a magazine subscription for his birthday, but I said that would be like carrying coals to Newcastle, since he already has fifteen or twenty subscriptions.”

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Idioms and Phrases

Do or bring something superfluous or unnecessary, as in Running the sprinkler while it's raining, that's carrying coals to Newcastle . This metaphor was already well known in the mid-1500s, when Newcastle-upon-Tyne had been a major coal-mining center for 400 years. It is heard less often today but is not yet obsolete.

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

A brother alderman, who happened to be a wag, remarked that "to bestow a key upon Key would be to carry coals to Newcastle, and that, therefore, Sir John must be satisfied with his habitual self-possession."

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My spirits rose every mile we left New Orleans behind us; I felt, besides, that to bring my skill to such a market was but to carry "coals to Newcastle;" nor, from the skipper's account, did Texas offer a much more favorable field.

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To carry coals to Newcastle; carry nothing from, or out of, this house; he carried these qualities into all he did; carry across the street, over the bridge, through the woods, around or round the corner; beyond the river; the cable was carried under the sea.

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To carry coals to Newcastle is well understood to be like giving alms to the wealthy; but viewed in union with the others would show what a prominent place coals seem to have in the popular mind.

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The English say, "To carry coals to Newcastle."

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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