LODE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Lode

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/loʊd/ Listen

noun

Lode n.

A water course or way; a reach of water. "Down that long, dark lode... he and his brother skated home in triumph."

(Mining) A body of ore visibly separated from adjacent rock.

Especially: (Mining) Any regular vein or course of valuable mineral, whether metallic or not.

Hence: A concentrated supply or source of something valuable.

mother lode a large concentrated source of mineral or other valuable thing, from which lesser sources have been derived; often used figuratively. The term may have been originally applied to real or imagined large deposits of gold from which smaller granules were washed downstream, there constituting a diluted source of gold, and hinting at the richer source from which they were derived; as, to hit the mother lode.

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Etymology of 'Lode'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Lode" Quotes from Famous Books

... without trouble. Well, we have both had hard work during the past year, what with felling trees to make bridges, chopping logs for fires, making roads practicable by moving rocks out of the way, occasionally using our picks where Dias thought that there was a lode, and carrying mules' burdens up ...

— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... Bland, and three soldiers of the 96th accompanied Governor Fitzgerald by sea to Champion Bay to examine the new mineral discoveries. The galena lode was found to be more important than had been at first supposed. On their return to the schooner, an affray occurred with the natives, in which the Governor ...

— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... the "Monastery," is very crudely worked; everything connected with it is primitive. A huge quarry, about 600 feet in circumference, and about 40 feet deep, had been opened up. There was nothing in it in the shape of lode or reef, but a large number of disconnected "stringers," or leaders of rocky matter, in which diamonds are often found. At the bottom of the quarry the water lay fully eight feet deep, owing to the fact that the mine had lain unworked during the war. A vertical shaft had been sunk a little ...

— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... there's a gentleman, down in the offis, wants to intervue him. Tell him he'd better lode up his dubble-barrl'd, breech-lodin blunderbuss with dannymite cartrag cos the gentleman ...

— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray

... as if by a miracle, he saw the way opened before him which he had himself hoped to tread, and now he was fettered and held back from an enterprise which he felt he could carry out with success and benefit to his country, while it attracted him as with a hundred lode-stones. ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers

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