adit

See also: adīt, -adit, and -ádit

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin aditus (“entrance, access”), from ad (“to, up to”) + itus (“going, departure”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈæ.dɪt/

Noun

adit (plural adits)

1. (mining) A horizontal or nearly horizontal passage from the surface into a mine, as contrasted with a shaft or vertical entry passage, used for ventilation, haulage, drainage, or other purposes.

   Synonym: tunnel

   Coordinate terms: shaft, mineshaft; portal

   • 1855, Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho!: Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC:

     A narrow and untrodden cavern at the bottom connects it with the outer sea; they could even then hear the mysterious thunder and gurgle of the surge in the subterranean adit, as it rolled huge boulders to and fro in darkness, and forced before it gusts of pent-up air.

   • 1885 September, H[enry] Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, […], published 1887, →OCLC:

     What all these passages are, of course I cannot say, but we thought that they must be the ancient workings of a mine, of which the various shafts and adits travelled hither and thither as the ore led them.

   • 1910 May, Harold Bindloss, The Gold Trail, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen, page 127:

     It consisted of an opening in the forest which clothed the hillside with the black mouth of an adit in the midst of it, and a few big mounds of debris, beside which stood a rude log shanty.

   • 2006, Mike Hetman, “Old Mine”, in IronMiners.com‎^[1], archived from the original on 19 August 2006:

     The Old Mine is currently entered through an upper adit as the main is no longer accessible.

   • 2008, Iain M. Banks, Matter, page 445:

     The adit sloped downwards into the bowels of some long-fallen building, following a passage that had silted up when the city had first been buried.

Translations

a horizontal or nearly horizontal passage from the surface into a mine

• Cornish: odyt m
• Czech: štola (cs) f
• Finnish: avoperä
• German: Stolleneingang m, Mundloch (de) n
• Hungarian: tárna (hu)
• Irish: tollbhealach m
• Polish: sztolnia (pl) f
• Russian: што́льня (ru) f (štólʹnja), тунне́ль (ru) m (tunnélʹ), тонне́ль (ru) m (tonnélʹ)
• Slovak: štôlňa f
• Swedish: stoll c, dagort (sv) c
• Turkish: giriş galerisi, yatay galeri

References

• “adit”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• ITAD, DITA, dati

Catalan

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic) [əˈðit]
• IPA^(key): (Valencia) [aˈðit]

Participle

adit (feminine adita, masculine plural adits, feminine plural adites)

1. past participle of adir-se

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈa.dɪt]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈaː.dit]

Verb

adit

1. third-person singular present active indicative of adeō