coals to Newcastle
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Meaning · English
Something brought to a place where it is already plentiful.
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
một thứ gì đó được mang đến nơi nó đã phong phú
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
And it's a case of coals, taking coals to Newcastle
It was left to Western businessmen to manufacture CCCP T - shirts which ended up on the Soviet black market, an acute case of carrying coals to Newcastle.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Figurative class: Euphemism (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31).
Common questions
What does “coals to Newcastle” mean?
Something brought to a place where it is already plentiful.
Is “coals to Newcastle” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.