Jump To:

• strip-mine
  strip-mine

  verb (used with or without object)

  to excavate by open-cut methods.
• strip mine
  strip mine

  An open mine, especially a coal mine, whose seams or outcrops run close to ground level and are exposed by the removal of overlying soil and rock. Strip mining can extract coal covered by as much as 60 m (200 ft) of rock and soil. If the seams roll through hills instead of lying flat, a series of tiers or contours are used to extract the coal or ore. Strip mining has been criticized for being ecologically destructive and for causing pollution of water resources, as the removed soil and rock are often dumped in lower-lying areas. Mining operators are sometimes required to restore soil and vegetation and to clean up the mining site.

strip-mine

American  

[strip-mahyn] / ˈstrɪpˌmaɪn /

verb (used with or without object)

strip-mined, strip-mining

1. to excavate by open-cut methods.

---

strip mine Scientific  

/ strĭp /

1. An open mine, especially a coal mine, whose seams or outcrops run close to ground level and are exposed by the removal of overlying soil and rock. Strip mining can extract coal covered by as much as 60 m (200 ft) of rock and soil. If the seams roll through hills instead of lying flat, a series of tiers or contours are used to extract the coal or ore. Strip mining has been criticized for being ecologically destructive and for causing pollution of water resources, as the removed soil and rock are often dumped in lower-lying areas. Mining operators are sometimes required to restore soil and vegetation and to clean up the mining site.

---

Other Word Forms

• strip mine
  noun

Etymology

Origin of strip-mine

First recorded in 1925–30

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

strip-mine strip mine strip-mined strip-mining

But if we are to experience a revival of the studia humanitatis—even as machine “intelligence” threatens to strip-mine the whole human archive—it will come through late-modern doubt and critique and from a new romanticism too.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2025

If making modern batteries requires us to strip-mine the ocean for ingredients, shouldn’t science assess in advance what toll that might take on an ecosystem we just found out about?

From Seattle Times ● Jul. 21, 2023

The Steelers’ refusal to strip-mine the roster and start over is now paying off.

From New York Times ● Oct. 21, 2020

NSO Group is an Israeli cyber-intelligence firm known for developing software that can take control of a cell phone and strip-mine it for data.

From The New Yorker ● Oct. 9, 2019

Strip-mine planting is better than none at all, but such soil as is left after a strip-mine operation is hardly the best.

From Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting Rochester, N.Y. August 31 and September 1, 1953 by Northern Nut Growers Association

The video also whirls through black-and-white landscapes of created objects—paper trees, a cardboard strip mine, a mirror lake.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 12, 2026

The viewer floats over slums, a strip mine, an artisanal sulfur mine.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2023

In 2021, a former Democratic state auditor in Kentucky announced a massive utility-scale solar farm atop a strip mine in Martin County.

From Salon ● Apr. 12, 2023

Brashear said his family’s safety atop the old strip mine made him feel guilty, especially since he blames the intensity of the floods, which Haneberg estimates as a one-in-600-year event, on coal executives.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 21, 2022

There were news vans set up like permanent trailer parks—surrounding the strip mine, outside the school, and along US Route 30.

From "Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story" by Nora Raleigh Baskin

The Nature Conservancy is exploring the possibility of renewables development on some 13,000 acres of strip-mined land on the 253,000 acres it owns in Kentucky, Virginia, and east Tennessee.

From Salon ● Apr. 12, 2023

That’s a concern, given the number of communities nestled in Appalachia’s strip-mined mountains.

From Scientific American ● Aug. 3, 2022

Nevertheless, with demand for nickel for electric vehicles growing exponentially, more and more strip-mined nickel is headed for electric vehicles, despite the cost.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 8, 2022

The making of this classic drama is a story that’s been told, retold, psychoanalyzed and strip-mined for leftovers — see “The Godfather: The Corleone Family Cookbook,” just one of a library’s worth of spinoff books.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 22, 2021

What kind of novel ought someone like Rooney — burnished and then strip-mined, too famous for her own good — write now?

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2021

Steve Beshear to protest the destructive mountaintop strip-mining of coal.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2026

The professionalization of youth sports—the incursion of for-profit companies strip-mining American childhood—hasn’t only wiped out recreational sports, it’s created a pernicious money culture.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026

We do need some mining to make the transition away from carbon-based transportation, but strip-mining in tropical environments is too high a cost to pay.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 8, 2022

Environmental groups allege that the Red Fox Mine, a large strip-mining site in southern West Virginia owned by Gov. Jim Justice's Bluestone Coal Corp., continues to exceed discharge limits for harmful substances.

From Salon ● Sep. 21, 2020

He passed a strip-mining works, huge blue arc lights burning in the dim midwinter daylight.

From "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman