clarain

English

From Latin clārus +‎ French -ain (“-ane”),^[1] after fusain. Coined by British birth control campaigner and paleontologist Marie Stopes in 1918.^[2]

clarain (countable and uncountable, plural clarains)

A form of coal having stratifications parallel to the bedding plane.
- 1954, Wilfrid Francis, “The Composition of Mature Coals”, in Coal: Its Formation and Composition, London: Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd., →OCLC, page 391:
  Insufficient fusain was available, whilst it was thought that the behaviour of clarain would be intermediate between durain and vitrain.

^ “clarain, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
^ Marie C[armichael] Stopes (22 August 1918), “On the Four Visible Ingredients in Banded Bituminous Coal: Studies in the Composition of Coal, No. 1”, in Proceedings of the Royal Society, series B (Biological Sciences), volume 90, number B 633, London: […] [F]or the Royal Society by Harrison & Sons, […], published 15 May 1919, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 472:
These four distinguishable ingredients, all of which, in varying quantities, are to be found in most ordinary bituminous coals, I name provisionally as follows:—(i) Fusain* […] (ii) Durain† […] (iii) Clarain† […] (iv) Vitrain† […]
* The French name, adopted into English by J. J. Stevenson (1911–13) and Stopes and Wheeler (1918), to replace our native unwieldy and misleading names “mother of coal” and “mineral charcoal.”
† The first use of new terms suggested by the present author, and each based on a Latin root descriptive of the substance and terminated in -⁠ain to match fusain. The latter word is a French word used by geologists in a specialised sense.

clarain m (plural clarains)