mine
/maɪ̯n/ pronoun, determiner, noun, verb
- pronoun Used predicatively. “The house itself is mine, but the land is not.”
- pronoun Used substantively, with an implied noun. “Mine has been a long journey.”
- pronoun Used absolutely, set off from the sentence. “Mine for only a week so far, it already feels like an old friend.”
- pronoun (informal) My house or home. “We had the party at mine.”
- pronoun As double possessive. “This house of mine is over 100 years old.”
- determiner (archaic or nonstandard) My; belonging to me.
- determiner Used attributively after the noun it modifies.
- determiner Used attributively before a vowel.
- noun An excavation from which ore or solid minerals are taken, especially one consisting of underground tunnels. “This diamond comes from a mine in South Africa.”
- noun (figurative) Any source of wealth or resources. “She's a mine of information about the history of mathematics.”
- noun (military) A passage dug toward or underneath enemy lines, which is then packed with explosives. “The most famous mine of the American Civil War led to the Battle of the Crater.”
- noun (military) A device intended to explode when stepped upon or touched, or when approached by a ship, vehicle, or person. “His left leg was blown off after he stepped on a mine.”
- noun (pyrotechnics) A type of firework that explodes on the ground, shooting sparks upward.
- noun (entomology) The cavity made by a caterpillar while feeding inside a leaf.
- noun (computing) A machine or network of machines used to extract units of a cryptocurrency. “A change to the blockchain method was contemplated to allow mines to hog less electric power.”
- verb (ambitransitive) To remove (rock or ore) from the ground. “Crater of Diamonds State Park is the only place in the world where visitors can mine their own diamonds.”
- verb To dig into, for ore or metal.
- verb (transitive) To sow mines (the explosive devices) in (an area). “We had to slow our advance after the enemy mined the road ahead of us.”
- verb (transitive) To damage (a vehicle or ship) with a mine (an explosive device).
- verb (intransitive) To dig a tunnel or hole; to burrow in the earth. “the mining cony”
Etymology
From Middle English min, myn, from Old English mīn, from Proto-West Germanic *mīn, from Proto-Germanic *mīnaz, from Proto-Indo-European *méynos.
Cognate with Saterland Frisian mien, West Frisian myn, Dutch mijn, Low German mien, German mein, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish min, Faroese and Icelandic mín.
From Middle English [Term?], from Old French mine, from Late Latin mina, from Gaulish (compare to Welsh mwyn, Irish mianach (“ore”)), from Proto-Celtic *meinis (“ore, metal”).
Borrowed from French mine.
Webster’s 1913
- noun See Mien. [Obs.]
- pronoun Belonging to me; my. Used as a pronominal to me; my. Used as a pronominal adjective in the predicate; as, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay." Rom. xii. 19. Also, in the old style, used attributively, instead of my, before a noun beginning with a vowel.
- verb To dig a mine or pit in the earth; to get ore, metals, coal, or precious stones, out of the earth; to dig in the earth for minerals; to dig a passage or cavity under anything in order to overthrow it by explosives or otherwise.
- verb To form subterraneous tunnel or hole; to form a burrow or lodge in the earth; as, the mining cony.
Etymology [F.]
Etymology [OE. min, fr. AS. min; akin to D. mijn, OS., OFries., & OHG. min, G. mein, Sw. & Dan. min, Icel. minn, Goth. meins my, mine, meina of me, and E. me. Me, and cf. My.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “mine”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details