LODE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • 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

... California creeks for vagrant particles of gold. Then, in the late fifties, he joined a mad stampede to the Frazer River gold-fields in British Columbia, still wild over its first knowledge of silver sulphurets, he was drawn back by the wonder-tales of the Comstock lode. ...

— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... large irregular one of pure arsenical pyrites, existing in a felsite dike near the sea coast. Surrounding it on all sides are micaceous schists, and in the neighborhood is a large hill of granite about 800 ft. high. In the lode and the rock immediately adjoining it are large quantities of pyrophylite, and in some places of the mine are deposits of this pure white, translucent mineral, but in the ore itself it is a yellow and pale olive green color, and is never ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... that the Sutro Tunnel (of which I gave you some particulars in one of my letters) has now progressed a total distance of 15,565 feet and has fairly entered the mineral belt, and will soon help to increase the already vast products of the Comstock lode. ...

— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various

... attention as he was now showing her and she was growing more and more desperate at the turn affairs had taken. She resolved to put a stop to his nonsense and to make him realise that she and no one else was the lode star of his existence. She beckoned to Aggie to get out of the room and to leave her a clear field and as soon as her friend had gone quietly into the next room, she called impatiently to Alfred who was still cooing rapturously over the young stranger. Finding Alfred deaf to her first entreaty, ...

— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo

... Fate had stepped up an' voted again it. He had wasted the best part of his life locatin' gold mines 'at wouldn't hang out, until at last even he got disgusted an' went to huntin' for his Injun root to cure rheumatiz with. First thing he knew, he had stumbled on a bonanza lode in the Esmeralda range. This here lode was a peach. Ten-foot face on top, just soggy with gold an' silver, an' copper an' tin enough to pay expenses. It just looked as if they's said, "Now then, there's Slocum; he been hammered so long he's got callous to it. Let's jus' see how he'd act if ...

— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

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