strip mine
2
6.0
- noun
- /strɪp maɪn/
- Specialized
:
mina a cielo abierto
- PHOTOS (BLACK & WHITE): Composted municipal biosolids and lime are applied (left) on a strip mine in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, at a rate of 90 dry tons per acre.
- coal strip mine
- abandoned strip mine
- largest strip mine
Examples
-
The 7,000-acre Anaconda Jackpile uranium strip mine at Laguna Pueblo has contaminated both land and water.
Academic text (1995) -
The second example involves the British-owned Peabody Coal Company, which operates two huge strip mines on the remote and sacred Black Mesa, leased from the Hopi and Navajo tribes.
Academic text (1995) -
Such devastated places as strip mines could be recycled in terms of earth art.
Academic text (2012) -
Strip mines are being reclaimed very well, although the landscape does look different.
Blog text (6) -
Benson wondered what connection he had with the Skirums, who were in the strip mine business.
Fiction book (2001) -
"I grew up in Archbald, and I used to wander around there when it was nothing but old mining roads and strip mines," said Burke.
Blog text (10) -
It argues that its strip mine helps keep down the cost of electric power in the region and provides employment for 173 people earning an annual payroll of $10 million.
Academic text (2004) -
Coal strip mines surround the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, disrupting the groundwater.
Academic text (1995) -
When demand for soft coal had fallen sometime in the late forties, the strip mine had been abandoned, and the golf course was constructed atop its somewhat softened contours.
Fiction book (2001) -
The nearby strip mine produced hundreds of tons of coal each year with minimal surface disturbance.
Synonyms
178
5.7
A hole in the ground where people dig for minerals like coal or gold
How Deep
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun 'strip mine' is directly compositional: 'strip' (to remove a covering or layer) modifies 'mine' (a place where minerals are dug), so it denotes a mine where the overlying material is stripped away. This literal, behaviour-based combination follows normal English noun-modifier patterns and would be inferable by a B1 learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
Strip mine is a name for a large open pit where people remove long strips of soil and rock to get coal or other minerals near the surface. So the name comes from the land being literally 'stripped' to reach the mine, and today it means 'an open pit mine where the surface is removed'.