stope
/stəʊp
/noun (usually stopes)
A step-like working in a mine: they haul the rock out of the stopes using buckets driven by small motorized winches...
- By this time the mine had three shafts, many large stopes and hundreds of metres of drives.
- For the next ten years it was leased to tributors who worked the old stopes of the conglomerate lode above the adit level.
- We explored the areas that were not being mined, including miles of old abandoned drifts and stopes.
verb [no object] (usually as noun stoping)
1(In mining) excavate a series of steps or layers in (the ground or rock).They financed the shaft and the equipment and they were away, sinking, drifting, and stoping, all at the same time, just as Rick laid it out....
- Once more Aclare was alive with the sounds from tunneling, stoping, dressing, sorting, bagging, and the loading of ore from the mine.
- Underground stoping, and work on the smelters had also been very costly.
1.1 (as noun stoping) Geology The process by which country rock is broken up and removed by the upward movement of magma.Emplacement was accompanied by local dilation to form contact parallel, NNW- and WNW-trending dykes and by stoping of contacts....
- The intrusions are passively emplaced into the surrounding host by stoping and assimilation.
- In summary, magmas do not have to rise in the crust by slow, density-driven diapiric processes, or stoping processes where the magma detaches and absorbs blocks of surrounding rock.
Origin
Mid 18th century: apparently related to the noun step.