longwall
A long wall of coal that is mined in a single slice.
Mining and extraction
591 entries in this trade.
LRG
Initialism of liquefied refinery gas.
lue
To sift using a sieve, particularly in mining tin or silver.
lum
A chimney; also, the top part of a chimney.
luncart
a lenticular mass, nodule, or ball
lurryman
One who handles or manages a lurry.
maingate
A tunnel admitting fresh air to the working face of a mine.
manriding
The transportation of workers around a mine by means of cages or trains etc.
mantrip
A shuttle for transporting miners down into an underground mine.
manwinding
The transportation of workers up and down a mine by means of cages that are raised and lowered.
marble
A metamorphic rock of crystalline limestone.
marrow
A miner's mate or assistant.
match factor
the ratio of truck arrival rate to loader service time (ratio of loading and dumping vehicles)
maundril
A pick with two prongs, used for prying.
mazut
A grade of heavy fuel oil used in industry and also sometimes used in lieu of home heating oil.
metal
Chemical elements or alloys, their ores, and the mines where their ores come from.
metalman
A workman who takes the roof down to give the miners more height to work in.
metasediment
A metamorphosed sedimentary rock.
microfacies
The composition, features, or appearance of a portion of a facies small enough to be examined in thin sections, or in rock samples of similar size.
midfeather
A support for the centre of a tunnel.
mill
A passage underground through which ore is shot.
mine car
A car that operates on rails laid in a mine, usually for carrying ore, coal, or waste.
miner's moss
Carpeting in sluice boxes used to collect heavy minerals from sluiced paydirt.
mineral right
The right to exploit the mineral resources located on or, especially, beneath a parcel of land.
mineralogy
The branch of petrology that studies minerals.
monolithologic
adjectiveMining and extraction
Composed of one kind of rock.
monton
A Mexican unit of weight for ore, varying from 1,800 to 3,200 Spanish pounds.
morlop
A small jasper pebble of a kind found in New South Wales.
MSHA
Acronym of Mine Safety and Health Administration
mudcap
An explosive charge covered in mud, sand, or similar material before detonation, instead of being placed in a borehole.
mudstone
A fine-grained sedimentary rock whose original constituents were clays or muds.
mullock
Overburden: waste material generated while searching for minerals or while mining, such as when sinking a shaft.
mullocker
A worker who clears waste material from a mine.
naphtha
Any of a wide variety of aliphatic or aromatic liquid hydrocarbon mixtures distilled from petroleum or coal tar, especially as used in solvents or petrol.
narrow work
The construction of passages, air-shafts, etc.
narrow-cut
adjectiveMining and extraction
Composed of moderately-heavy hydrocarbons with boiling points in the kerosene range, without a significant proportion of lighter, gasoline-type hydrocarbons; Jet A is an example of a fuel of this type.
nether
A trouble; a fault or dislocation in a seam of coal.
nicking
The cutting made by the hewer at the side of the face.
nickings
Small coal produced during cutting at the side of the coalface.
nip-out
The situation where the roof and thill approach each other, diminishing the usual thickness of the coal seam or extinguishing it completely.
noodler
A fossicker, someone who scours mine dumps for valuables.
offtake
The removal of oil (or an industrial chemical) from a storage facility.
oncostman
Any workman who was paid a daily rate.
onsetter
A worker at the bottom of a mineshaft who exchanges the empty and full corves.
operator
The company that operates a mine; often the same one that owns the mine.
orefield
land from which ore is mined
orthoamphibolite
Metamorphic rock composed mostly of amphibole, plagioclase, with lesser amounts of epidote, zoisite, chlorite, quartz, titanite, and accessory leucoxene, ilmenite and magnetite derived from an igneous rock.
orthomagmatic
adjectiveMining and extraction
Relating to the main phase of crystallisation of magma.
outbye
adverbMining and extraction
In the direction away from the coal face.
outcropper
One who obtains coal from an outcrop, at or close to the surface.
overcast
A place where one roadway crosses another, specifically where an airway was built across the top of another airway for ventilation purposes.
paddock
A place in a superficial deposit where ore or washdirt (“earth rich enough in metal to pay for washing”) is excavated; also, a place for storing ore, washdirt, etc.
panel
One of the districts divided by pillars of extra size, into which a mine is laid off in one system of extracting coal.
paraffin
Any member of the alkane hydrocarbons.
patcher
The driver's assistant or lackey in a team of miners.
pay dirt
Earth which contains profitable quantities of ore.
paystreak
The zone, parallel to the walls of a vein, in which the ore is concentrated, or any narrow streak of paying ore in less valuable material.
peloid
An allochem composed of micrite.
pentice
An unexcavated portion of a shaftway, intended to afford protection from falling debris to workers at the bottom of the shaft during certain stages of mining.
permissible
Any tool or device permitted for use in potentially explosive mine environments.