Definition of "culm" []

• The stem of a grass or similar plant. (noun)
• Waste from anthracite coal mines, consisting of fine coal, coal dust, and dirt. (noun)
• Carboniferous shale. (noun)
• Inferior anthracite coal. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Variations in the diameter of the shaft (called a culm), in the prominence of the nodes, and in the rate of tapering at the end of the culm all make certain applications difficult."
• "The only way to use the beastly stuff was to mix it with wet, salt mud from the river into what the country people call culm -- then you cut it into blocks, or make balls of it, and it hardens."
• "From the mountainous piles of refuse, of "culm," barefooted children, nearly as black as their miner fathers, were tramping homeward with burdens of coal that they had gleaned from the waste."