Showing results for "mining"

• present participle of mine.

mining

American  

[mahy-ning] / ˈmaɪ nɪŋ /

noun

• minings
  plural

1. the act, process, or industry of extracting ores, coal, etc., from mines.

2. the laying of explosive mines.

3. Digital Technology. the act or process by which cryptocurrency transactions, especially bitcoin, are verified and new cryptocurrency is generated: computer networks are used to solve sets of mathematical problems, that, when solved, yield a unit of that currency.

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mining British  

/ ˈmaɪnɪŋ /

noun

1. the act, process, or industry of extracting coal, ores, etc, from the earth

2. military the process of laying mines

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• minings
  plural

Etymology

Origin of mining

First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English: “undermining (walls in an attack)”; mine ² + -ing ¹

Explanation

The process of removing something valuable from underground is mining. In order for coal to be used as fuel, it has to first be extracted from sedimentary rock through mining. Mining is used to extract minerals, gemstones, oil, gas, and any other materials that are useful or valuable enough to make the process worthwhile. Digging up substances from the earth is always tedious and sometimes dangerous. Coal mining is notoriously unhealthy for its workers, and surface mining involves blasting rocks with explosives to extract precious metals. You can think of mining as a kind of underground tunneling, from the verb mine, "to dig a tunnel."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

mining minings

In recent months, the government of interim president Delcy Rodriguez has launched reforms in the oil and mining sectors aimed at attracting much-needed foreign investment.

From Barron's ● Sep. 12, 2026

Tata has been mining soda ash for years in Lake Magadi, a vast area often covered by a whitish salt crust.

From BBC ● Sep. 12, 2026

It also includes the stocks of metals and mining companies, and often those involved in the production of agricultural-related minerals as well.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 9, 2026

The new EU investments include a project to boost satellites and improve internet access in remote areas of the sparsely populated island, and two mining projects to secure critical raw materials.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 7, 2026

Dust clouds bloomed around the mining robot as he resumed working.

From "The Wild Robot Protects" by Peter Brown

On Capitol Hill, the Reagan Administration was engaged in some belated fence mending with Congress following the furor raised three weeks ago by legislators who charged that they had been inadequately briefed on the minings.

From Time Magazine Archive

Nothing would be done on either side but stick-in-the-mud warfare and those trench-raids and minings which had no object except "to keep up the spirit of the men."

From Now It Can Be Told by Philip Gibbs

Meantime a cough, the herald of consumption, tormented him, and "the slow minings of the hectic fire" within began to manifest themselves more visibly in days and nights of feverish excitement.

From The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 17, No. 477, February 19, 1831 by Various

He had no genius for the tactics of intrigue; your reconnoiterings, and marchings, and countermarchings, sappings, and minings, assaults, sometimes surrenders, and sometimes repulses.

From Coningsby by Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield

And the open goings-forth of it, still more the secret minings and mole-courses of it, were into all places.

From History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 05 by Thomas Carlyle

Related Words

• drilling