Char means to burn something until it turns black and crusty. When you leave marshmallows over a campfire too long, they char on the outside, turning dark and bitter. Toast left in the toaster becomes charred bread, blackened and sometimes smoking.

When wood chars, it doesn't burst into flames but slowly darkens and hardens into carbon.

Chefs sometimes char food on purpose. Grilled vegetables might be lightly charred for a smoky flavor, with those appealing black lines across peppers or corn. But there's a difference between deliberately charring food for flavor and accidentally burning dinner until it's inedible.

As a noun, char is the blackened, carbon-rich material left behind after something has been partly burned.

You might see “char” in science class when learning about fire or carbon. The charred remains of something tell investigators what burned and how hot the fire got. Archaeologists study charred seeds and wood from ancient fires to understand how people lived thousands of years ago.