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lode

[lohd]
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noun
  1. a veinlike deposit, usually metalliferous.
  2. any body of ore set off from adjacent rock formations.
  3. a rich supply or source.
  4. British. a waterway or channel.
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Origin of lode

before 900; Middle English; Old English lād way, course, carrying; cognate with Old Norse leith way, route, Old High German leita procession. See load, lade, lead1
Can be confusedload lode
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Related Words

vein, strike, mine, reef, fissure, lead

Examples from the Web for lode

Contemporary Examples

Historical Examples

  • The lode descends steeply, and the excavation must follow its course.

  • A railroad four miles long, conveys the quartz from the lode to the mills.

  • When he crosses a lode, its bending is supposed to indicate the presence thereof.

    Storyology

    Benjamin Taylor

  • To strike a lode and win a braw lass a' in the day, ye may say.

  • Mebbe he believes that bunk about the lode being copper, and mebbe he don't.

    Bloom of Cactus

    Robert Ames Bennet

British Dictionary definitions for lode

lode

noun
  1. a deposit of valuable ore occurring between definite limits in the surrounding rock; vein
  2. a deposit of metallic ore filling a fissure in the surrounding rock
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Word Origin

Old English lād course. Compare load
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for lode

n.

original Middle English spelling of load (n.), and custodian of most of the original meaning of "way, course, carrying." Differentiation in sense took place 16c. Mining sense of "vein of metal ore" is from c.1600, from notion of miners "following" it through the rock.

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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
lode in Science

lode

[lōd]
  1. A vein of mineral ore that is deposited between clearly demarcated layers of rock or that fills a fissure in a rock formation.
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The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.