mile
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /maɪ̯l/
ipa: [maɪ̯ɫ]
rhymes: -aɪl
Forms: form: miles
form: mile
Etymology: From Middle English myle, mile, from Old English mīl, from Proto-West Germanic *mīliju, a borrowing of Latin mīlia, mīllia, plural of mīle, mīlle (“mile”) (literally ‘thousand’ but used as a short form of mīlle passūs (“a thousand paces”)).
Senses: examples: text: Turn left in 1.2 miles.
raw_tags: UK colloquial plural
text: You need to go about three mile down the road.
text: 3.6 km is about 2 miles.
glosses: The international mile: a unit of length precisely equal to 1.609344 kilometers established by treaty among Anglophone nations in 1959, divided into 5,280 feet or 1,760 yards.
examples: text: Athelstan Arundel walked home all the way, foaming and raging. No omnibus, cab, or conveyance ever built could contain a young man in such a rage. His mother lived at Pembridge Square, which is four good measured miles from Lincoln's Inn.
ref: 1892, Walter Besant, The Ivory Gate: A Novel, page 16:
text: Ivor had acquired more than a mile of fishing rights with the house ; he was not at all a good fisherman, but one must do something ; one generally, however, banged a ball with a squash-racket against a wall.
ref: 1922, Michael Arlen, “3/19/2”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days:
text: From the ground, Colombo’s port does not look like much.[…] But viewed from high up in one of the growing number of skyscrapers in Sri Lanka’s capital, it is clear that something extraordinary is happening: China is creating a shipping hub just 200 miles from India’s southern tip.
ref: 2013 June 8, “The new masters and commanders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 52:
glosses: Any of several customary units of length derived from the 1593 English statute mile of 8 furlongs, equivalent to 5,280 feet or 1,760 yards of various precise values.
glosses: Any of many customary units of length derived from the Roman mile (mille passus) of 8 stades or 5,000 Roman feet.
glosses: The Scandinavian mile: a unit of length precisely equal to 10 kilometers defined in 1889.
glosses: Any of many customary units of length from other measurement systems of roughly similar values, as the Chinese mile or Arabic mile.
topics: lifestyle
tourism
transport
travel
glosses: An airline mile in a frequent flyer program.
examples: text: The shot missed by a mile.
glosses: Any similarly large distance.
examples: text: The runners competed in the mile.
topics: athletics
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: A race of 1 mile's length; a race of around 1 mile's length (usually 1500 or 1600 meters)
examples: text: five miles over the speed limit
glosses: One mile per hour, as a measure of speed.
Derived terms: air mile
a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
a mile wide and an inch deep
a miss is as good as a mile
Arab mile
Arabic mile
Arabian mile
available seat-mile
available ton mile
beer mile
bus mile
car mile
Chinese mile
country mile
Curry Mile
first mile
food miles
Forty Mile
a mile away
geographic mile
geographical mile
give someone an inch and someone will take a mile
give them an inch and they'll take a mile
go the extra mile
half a mile
half-mile
Imperial mile
in for an inch, in for a mile
international mile
Irish mile
Italian mile
kilomile
land mile
last mile
last mile school
light-mile
measured mile
metric mile
middle mile
mile-a-minute
mile a minute
milecastle
Mile End
mile-fortlet
milelong
mile marker
miles away
miles gloriosus
miles of bad road
milestone
mileway
milewide
milometer
miracle mile
nautical mile
negamile
Nine Mile
passenger mile
plane mile
postmile
quarter-mile
Roman mile
route mile
run a mile
Scandinavian mile
Scots mile
Scottish mile
sea mile
seatmile
seat-mile
second-mile service
Six Mile
Six Mile Bottom
square mile
Square Mile
standing mile
stand out a mile
statute mile
stick out a mile
survey mile
Swedish mile
talk a mile a minute
Ten Mile Bank
thousand-mile stare
Three Mile Island
ton-mile
ton mile
traffic mile
train mile
walk a mile in someone's shoes
zero mile marker
Related terms: mileage
milepost
miles per gallon
milestone
mpg