Mining

How to spell mining

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mining

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mining mean?

1. nounThe activity or industry of extracting coal, metals, or other minerals from the ground.
2. nounThe process of using computer power to validate transactions and generate units of a cryptocurrency.

Mining in a sentence

• Coal mining once employed most of the men in the valley.

• Bitcoin mining consumes enormous amounts of electricity.

• The company invested heavily in gold mining across three continents.

• He built a custom rig for crypto mining in his garage.

Where does mining come from?

Language of origin: French

This word grows out of the verb 'mine', which English took from the Old French verb 'miner', meaning to dig or to tunnel. The French verb traces back to a Late Latin form 'minare', though the deeper root is uncertain and is often linked to a Gaulish or Celtic word for an underground passage or ore, which is why etymologists treat the earliest origin with caution. English began using 'mine' for digging into the earth in the 1300s, and adding the familiar '-ing' ending produced a noun naming the whole activity and industry. The same root sits behind related words such as 'mineral' and the military 'mine', the buried explosive, which started life as a tunnel dug under enemy fortifications. The spelling is mercifully regular: the silent 'e' of 'mine' simply drops before '-ing', leaving the long 'i' to be remembered by the reader rather than marked on the page.

How the word is built

• mine (to dig for ore)
• -ing (forming a noun of activity)