miner
Pluralminers
- 1A worker employed in a mine, extracting coal, ore, or other materials from beneath the ground.
Each miner carried a lamp down into the deep shaft.
The miners went on strike over unsafe working conditions.
Note
Built from mine plus -er, and the suffix can be read two ways. It may be the plain agent ending, one who mines, or the occupational one, someone whose trade is the mine. People who "work mines" are miners. Mineworker is the closest match. Mineowner sits nearby in meaning but names the person who owns the mine, not the one who goes down it.
- 2A person who operates computers to generate new units of cryptocurrency by validating transactions on a network.
Like a lottery where the more computing power you bring, the better your odds of winning the prize.
The miner who first solves the puzzle gets to add the next block.
Cryptocurrency miners compete to validate transactions across the whole network.
Note
The metaphor is the old one of digging for value: new coins come out of the network as a reward for work. Benjamin Wallace, writing in Wired in 2011, describes the first miner to solve each puzzle winning 50 new bitcoins. In his account, the puzzles grow harder as more miners join. The word carries that sense of a race, with many miners competing for the same prize.
- 3A program or piece of equipment that creates new units of cryptocurrency by performing the mining computations.
Like a tireless machine panning a digital stream for new coins instead of working a river.
The miner consumed more electricity than the rest of the household combined.
Modern miners are built around specialized chips designed for a single task.
Similarrig
Note
Cryptocurrency gives the word to the machine as well as the person. In financial reporting, miners can mean programs, dedicated hardware, or whole operations. A line about Kazakhstan-based miners losing access to the bitcoin network reads equally well either way, and often the distinction does not matter. When it does, say the software or the hardware outright. The human miner is the person running it.
- 4A person who places and operates ordnance mines and similar explosive devices.
The army's miners laid charges beneath the fortress walls.
A skilled miner could clear a field of buried explosives in hours.
Similarsapper
- 5Any of several Australian honeyeater birds belonging to the genus Manorina.
The miner defended its patch of flowering shrubs from every intruder.
A flock of miners can drive away much larger birds.
- 6Any of four honeyeater species in the genus Manorina, found only in Australia.
A miner perched on the fence, watching for intruders near its nest.
Miners in the genus Manorina occur only across mainland Australia.
Note
The same name with a different origin. For these birds, miner is traced to myna, the name of another bird, rather than to the digger's mine plus -er. The Manorina honeyeaters carry the digging explanation instead, so the two accounts are best read as rival stories for one bird name. Either way, the spelling and the plural, miners, are identical.
- 7Any of several South American ovenbird species belonging to the genus Geositta.
The miner dug a long tunnel into the bank for its nest.
Several miners foraged along the bare hillside in the morning light.
Note
Two separate groups of birds share this name on opposite sides of the world: these South American ovenbirds of the genus Geositta, and the Australian honeyeaters of Manorina. The common name alone points to both. Wherever the difference matters, the genus name is the safe way to say which miner is meant.
Practice
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Origins
Formed from "mine" with the suffix "-er", used to make an agent or occupational noun.
A variant of "myna".