salt mine
Americannoun
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a mine from which salt is excavated.
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Usually salt mines. a place of habitual confinement and drudgery.
After two weeks of vacation it will be back to the salt mines for the staff.
Etymology
Origin of salt mine
First recorded in 1675–85
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It has also been found in 3,000-year-old faeces preserved in a salt mine in Hallstatt, Austria -- which serves as one of the only other available views into the ancient human microbiome.
From Barron's ● Jun. 3, 2026
Found by the Allies in the salt mine at Bad-Aussee, they were returned to Czech authorities at the end of the war, only to be appropriated by the state during the Communist era.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 26, 2025
Their bunker, an astonishingly constructed salt mine, has a house, individual rooms, a swimming pool, a fishery and just about anything else you’d need in the aftermath of an ecoapocalypse.
From Salon ● Dec. 7, 2024
In video posted on a Russian Telegram channel, which the BBC has not yet been able to verify, Mr Prigozhin is apparently seen alongside Wagner soldiers in a Soledar salt mine.
From BBC ● Jan. 11, 2023
I felt trapped again, like I had felt under the floorboards and down in the salt mine.
From "Prisoner B-3087" by Alan Gratz
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
