mile
noun /maɪl/
/maɪl/
Idioms - (abbreviation m)(in Britain and North America) a unit for measuring distance equal to 1 609 metres or 1 760 yards
- a 20-mile drive to work
- an area of four square miles
- a mile-long procession
- The nearest bank is about half a mile down the road.
- The boys were left stranded two miles from home.
- He runs 10 miles every morning.
- We did about 30 miles a day on our cycling trip.
- The car must have been doing at least 100 miles an hour.
- (British English) My car does 35 miles to the gallon.
- (North American English) My car gets 35 miles to the gallon.
- (figurative) His thoughts were racing a mile a minute (= very fast).
Extra ExamplesTopics Maths and measurementa1- She drives about 50 miles a day.
- Most parents travel miles across London to reach the club.
- They live 40 miles from the nearest supermarket.
- She crossed hundreds of miles of frozen tundra on a dog sled.
- Fell-runners who are out to win can cover the three miles in just over 15 minutes.
- Good runners can cover the three miles in just over 15 minutes.
- She was talking a mile a minute.
- The country's Red Sea coast stretches some 500 miles.
- The police stopped them doing 100 miles per hour on the motorway.
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadjective- nautical
- square
- cover
- cycle
- do
- …
- miles an hour
- miles per hour
- a mile a minute
- …
- miles and miles of desert
- There isn't a house for miles around here.
- I'm not walking—it's miles away.
- It was a wonderful journey through miles and miles of lush green jungle.
- (informal) She's taller than you by a mile.
- the mile[singular] a race over one mile
- He ran the mile in less than four minutes.
- a four-minute mile
Word OriginOld English mīl, based on Latin mil(l)ia, plural of mille ‘thousand’ (the original Roman unit of distance was mille passus ‘a thousand paces’).
Idioms
be miles away
- (informal) to be thinking deeply about something and not aware of what is happening around you
give somebody an inch (and they’ll take a mile/yard)
- (saying) used to say that if you allow some people a small amount of freedom or power they will see you as weak and try to take a lot more
go the extra mile (for somebody/something)
- to make a special effort to achieve something, help somebody, etc.
- a willingness to go the extra mile to make a project work
miles from anywhere
- (informal) in a place that is a long way from a town and surrounded only by a lot of open country, sea, etc.
- We broke down miles from anywhere.
a miss is as good as a mile
- (saying) there is no real difference between only just failing in something and failing in it badly because the result is still the sameTopics Difficulty and failurec2
run a mile (from somebody/something)
- (informal) to show that you are very frightened of doing something
see, spot, tell, smell, etc. something a mile off
- (informal) to see or realize something very easily and quickly
- He's wearing a wig—you can see it a mile off.
- After twenty years in the police she could smell a liar a mile off.
stand/stick out a mile
- to be very obvious or easy to notice
- It stood out a mile that she was lying.