lode
n. countablen. a large, natural deposit of valuable minerals or metal underground. It is a specific area where miners can find things like gold or silver.
n. a large, natural deposit of valuable minerals or metal, typically found in a vein or layer within a rock formation. Often used in the context of mining or geological exploration.
The miners discovered a rich lode of silver deep in the mountain.
After months of drilling, the geologists finally identified a primary lode that could support a new mining operation.
The discovery of a massive gold lode in the late nineteenth century triggered a massive influx of prospectors, transforming the remote valley into a bustling industrial hub overnight.
Doublet of load, which has however become semantically restricted. The now-archaic lode continues the old sense of Old English lād (“way, course, journey”) but by the 19th century survived only dialectally in the sense of “watercourse”, as a technical term in mining, and in the compounds lodestone, lodestar.