carry coals to Newcastle
Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary
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[edit] English
[edit] Alternative forms
[edit] Etymology
Newcastle upon Tyne (in Britain) was a major coal exporting city, so sending coal there would be pointless.
[edit] Verb
- (idiomatic) To do something that is unneeded or redundant.
- 1851 However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare. — Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 81.
[edit] Translations
do something unneeded or redundant
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