dragline
/ˈdraɡlʌɪn
/noun
1A large excavator with a bucket pulled in by a wire cable.Huge shovels pulled by draglines scoop the topaz-laden clay from the low-angled sides of the open pit, dumping it into washing pits at the top....
- While mining companies used to dig out the oilsands using draglines and bucketwheels, those large pieces of machinery are being phased out in favour of trucks and shovels, which have become better - not to mention bigger - in recent years.
- Where miners used to toil underground, drilling and blasting, the earth is now ripped open by gargantuan shovels and draglines; these machines, too, are controlled by one worker in a high glass booth.
2A line of silk produced by a spider and acting as a safety line or (in newly hatched spiders) a parachute.Most of the research has focused on a type of silk known as dragline, which spiders use to construct the frame of their web....
- Wolf spiders provide an interesting taxon to examine indirectly mediated predator-prey interactions because, in addition to excreta, they also leave a silk dragline behind them while moving through the environment.
- ‘When a fly hits the web, the sticky silk cushions the impact and traps the fly, but the stiff dragline silk absorbs the force and keeps the web intact,’ he said.