fusain

Borrowed from French fusain.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfjuːzeɪn/

fusain (countable and uncountable, plural fusains)

2. Fine charcoal of willow wood, used as a drawing implement.
4. A drawing made with it.
6. Fossilized charcoal that exists in geologic formations, which often contain other fossil fuels nearby as well (e.g., bitumen, brown coal).

   Synonym: mother of coal

   Hypernyms: mineral coal, coal; charcoal

   • 2025, Harriet Rix, “Introduction”, in The Genius of Trees: How They Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World, Crown, →ISBN:

     By the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago, trees had spread over so much of the globe and locked down so much carbon that they altered the atmosphere completely. Levels of oxygen went rocketing up from 15 percent to 35 percent, with a correspondingly massive impact on life on earth. Animals became gigantic, plants struggled to adapt, and oxygen became so available that fire destroyed huge swathes of trees. A particular type of fossil carbon called fusain is everywhere in Carboniferous fossil deposits, evidence of widespread forest fires. But through their structure and chemistry, trees learned to survive and even to master fire, as well as the other elements, and out of the ashes of the Carboniferous forests a thousand new types of tree evolved.

• Finaus

Borrowed from French fusain, from Vulgar Latin *fusago, from Latin fusus.

• IPA^(key): /fyˈzɛn/
• Hyphenation: fu‧sain
• Rhymes: -ɛn

fusain m (plural fusains, no diminutive)

1. (art) a fusain, a charcoal sketch
2. (art, chiefly uncountable) fusain, a type of charcoal used for drawing
   • ca. 1882, Vincent van Gogh, letter 287, in Brieven aan zijn broeder, part 2, publ. 1914, page 158.

     Ik heb deze teekening gemaakt met fusain en bergkrijt en drukinkt.

     I have made this drawing with fusain and mountain chalk and printer's ink.

• houtskool

Inherited from Middle French fusain (“spindle tree”), receiving an artistic sense in early 18th c. because its carbonized sticks were very convenient for drawing, further from Old French fusain akin to Italian fusaggine (“spindle tree”), derived from Latin fuso (“spindle”), which is from fusus of unclear origin.

• IPA^(key): /fy.zɛ̃/

• Audio (France (Vosges)):

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• Audio (France (Somain)):

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fusain m (plural fusains)

1. spindle tree
2. (art, uncountable) charcoal
3. (art, countable) charcoal drawing

• “fusain”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012