ClimateAugust 30, 2026
dragline
DRAG-line
Definition
A massive piece of heavy excavation equipment used in surface mining to remove large amounts of earth and rock to reach coal seams.
Etymology
The word is a compound of the verb 'drag' and the noun 'line,' referring to the system of cables and chains used to pull a bucket across the ground.
In the news
The article uses the term to describe the heavy machinery responsible for the large-scale displacement of earth, which ironically created the open grasslands that now host the elk herd.
Kentucky released 1,541 elk onto the strip-mined coalfields of its eastern counties between 1997 and 2002, and the herd now runs about 13,000, the largest east of the Rockies, because an elk is a grazer, and the mines had done what the forest never could —
Read the full article ↗ScienceBlog.com