mineshaft
6
7.2
- noun
- /ˈmaɪnˌʃæft/
:
pozo de mina
- After a careful inspection, they sealed the old mineshaft to prevent accidents.
- an old mineshaft
- a canary in the mineshaft
Examples
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The workers descended into the mineshaft to extract valuable minerals from deep underground.
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He's just playing in an abandoned mineshaft.
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- Before we left his place, I showed him the mineshaft.
-
The kid's trapped in a mineshaft up here.
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Look, there's a mineshaft over that clearing over there.
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These workers live in eight compounds distributed around the property near various mineshafts.
Academic text (1992) -
They're in the old Excelsior mineshaft.
-
An enormous amount of debris from the mineshaft was strewn out in a wide field, and I realized somebody had been digging for a long time to extract all this material.
Fiction book (1999) -
The children were warned not to play near the abandoned mineshaft at the edge of the forest.
Synonyms
106
5.5
A vertical or sloping passage, for example for an elevator in a building
How Deep
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Mineshaft comes from two simple words: mine means a place where people 'dig for minerals' and shaft means a 'long, narrow pole' or 'narrow passage'. So a mineshaft is literally a long, narrow way down into a mine, which is why it means the deep vertical passage miners use to reach the mine or to bring fresh air underground.