LODE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.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

... European; the plan on the piece of tin—ah, the piece of tin! Mechanically the sailor produced it from the breast-pocket of his jersey. At last the mysterious sign "32/1" revealed its significance. Measure thirty-two feet from the mouth of the tunnel, dig one foot in depth, and you came upon the mother-lode of this gold-bearing rock. This, then, was the secret of ...

— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... he said, "that I have struck the only lode of this ore in the Teton, or possibly in this part of the world, but I don't know for certain. There may be plenty of it only waiting to be found. That, however, doesn't trouble me. The great point is that nobody except myself knows how ...

— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss

... info[r]m'd us that thay had taken Puerta Vella and plundred the most part of the Towne, without the loss of many men, onely five or six men wounded, and that a cannoe of the best plunder, as cloth of silver, cloth of tishee,[23] being soe covittious to lode deepe, sanck in the river comeing downe; the small fortes fiering, they wounded 2 or 3 men in the cannoes. Our plunder being carried downe to the Bastamentes, and our peopple which marched by land being come, carries ...

— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... interior of its prey with honey is doubly objectionable; I might extinguish the lingering vitality which keeps putrefaction at bay in the victim, and I might confuse the delicate art of the larva, which might not be able to recover the lode at which it was working or to distinguish between those parts which are lawfully and properly eaten and those which must not be consumed until a later period. As I have shown in a previous volume, the grub of the Scolia has taught me much in this respect. The only larvae acceptable for this ...

— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... enabled them to be constructed. One of the richest silver mines of Peru is that of Salcedo, but nothing is now known of it except its tragical history. A Don Jose Salcedo, a Spaniard, without a maravedi in his pocket, made love to an Indian girl, whose mother promised to reveal to him a rich silver lode on condition that he married ...

— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston

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