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

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Etymology

Origin of mining

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

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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

They are also used for mining, oil drilling, construction and other industries.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2026

The sea aster mining bee has a particular taste in flowers and relies on the sea aster, a pink and yellow flower that blooms on coastal marshes, as summer moves into autumn.

From BBC ● Oct. 27, 2026

Munoz highlights the need to streamline mining permits, attract investment and improve infrastructure, especially in energy, logistics and water, which the industry requires.

From Barron's ● Oct. 22, 2026

As a result, he says the logistics company plans to hold back on major capital expenditures until projects are officially approved, continuing to direct capital toward active growth areas like mining.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 22, 2026

Private companies are working on different ideas, ranging from space tourism to mining on asteroids.

From "Women in Space" by Karen Bush Gibson

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

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

Provided the differences amount not to an insolent opposition of Laws, and Government, or Religion established, as to the essentials of them, such motions and minings are intolerable.

From Eikon Basilike The Pourtracture of His Sacred Majestie, in His Solitudes and Sufferings by King of England Charles I

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

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

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Related Words

• drilling

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