sulfur mine
1
5.3
- noun
- /ˈsʌlfər maɪn/
- US
:
mina de azufre
- After years of hard labor, they finally struck a rich vein of sulfur in the sulfur mine.
Examples
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These I gave up to avoid working in the sulphur mine.
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It started buying and developing low-sulfur mines, particularly in the Powder River Basin.
Academic text (1998) -
Part of the sulfur problem is that it became so abundant as a byproduct of oil and gas processing that primary sulfur mines closed.
Blog text (23) -
Over the last decade, as a result of these western acquisitions and the closing of high-sulfur mines in Appalachia, Peabody production has gone from being less than half to fully 86 percent low-sulfur coal.
Academic text (1998) -
The workers carefully extracted sulfur from the sulfur mine deep underground.
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The sulfur mine provided the local community with jobs and a vital resource for various industries.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'sulfur' (the chemical element) + 'mine' (a place where ores are extracted) denotes a mine for sulfur. This noun–noun compound follows a regular and cross-linguistically common pattern, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Sulfur mine comes from the simple image of a mine where bright yellow sulfur is dug up, often with a strong rotten-egg smell. So it means 'a mine where sulfur is extracted'.