Crossword clues for overburden
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Overburden \O`ver*bur"den\, v. t.
To load with too great weight or too much care, etc.
--Sir P.
Sidney.
Overburden \O"ver*bur`den\, n.
The waste which overlies good stone in a quarry.
--Raymond.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context geology English) The rock and subsoil that lies above a mineral deposit such as a coal seam. 2 (context archaeology English) A sterile stratum that lies above the stratum being investigated vb. To overload or overtax
WordNet
n. the surface soil that must be moved away to get at coal seams and mineral deposits
an excessive burden [syn: overload]
v. burden with too much work or responsibility
load with excessive weight
Wikipedia
In mining, overburden (also called waste or spoil) is the material that lies above an area that lends itself to economical exploitation, such as the rock, soil, and ecosystem that lies above a coal seam or ore body. Overburden is distinct from tailings, the material that remains after economically valuable components have been extracted from the generally finely milled ore. Overburden is removed during surface mining, but is typically not contaminated with toxic components and may be used to restore an exhausted mining site to a semblance of its appearance before mining began.
A related term is interburden, meaning material that lies between two areas of economic interest, such as the material separating coal seams within strata.
Usage examples of "overburden".
Minds are overburdened in school, with too much teaching or misdirected teaching.
A dangerous transformation when the brain is overburdened with emotions, when the nerves are overstrung and the heart full to breaking.
The flow of pioneers, so vital in all its aspects, and which has yielded such inestimable benefits at the early stages of this widely ramified enterprise, must, however urgent the other tasks already shouldered by an overburdened yet unfailingly protected community, be neither arrested nor slacken.
With a final rip, the dress split in two and Desdemona lay on the linoleum, exposing to the world the misery of her underwear, her overburdened underwire brassiere, her gloomy underpants, and the frantic girdle whose stays she was even now popping as she approached the summit of her dishevelment.
Entebbe airport by Magdalena Iganga, one of the oncologists on a small team that had been put together by Medecins Sans Frontieres to help overburdened Ugandan doctors tackle the growing number of Yeyuka cases.
He was overburdened with trust and vastly undersupplied with information.
Chapter 24 Their betters were invited to sup at the house of a gentleman of Darlington, where the earl and countess of Westmorland would lodge, but the waiting gentlewomen and lesser female servants made do with what a harried and overburdened innkeeper could supply for their supper.
Two hundred yards long, fifteen feet deep, the overburden of sand stripped away, the oyster line showing clean and white in the sun, the bulldozers clear of the pit bottom - fighting back the sea.
Giant barrels of dwarven ale, imported from Stone Mountain, had been hauled out of the cellars and were resting on protesting, overburdened wood frames.
He replied to a magistrate of Moulins, who congratulated him on having a nephew whom his masters overburdened with kind treatment, that they ought to love him, since he was nearly related to them.
With a final rip, the dress split in two and Desdemona lay on the linoleum, exposing to the world the misery of her underwear, her overburdened underwire brassiere, her gloomy underpants, and the frantic girdle whose stays she was even now popping as she approached the summit of her dishevelment.
But ragged shapes crowded this quarter with turmoil: milling and yelling children, women overburdened with jugs and baskets, men plying their trades, day laborer, muledriver, carter, scavenger, artisan, butcher, tanner, priest, minstrel, vendor chanting or chaffering about his pitiful wares.
He told them that steps would be taken immediately to free his serfs and that till then they were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their babies were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to the serfs, punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and hospitals, asylums, and schools were to be established on all the estates.
Falcon had run through his fortune, but had acquired, in the process, certain talents which, as they cost the acquirer dear, so they sometimes repay him, especially if he is not overburdened with principle, and adopts the notion that, the world having plucked him, he has a right to pluck the world.
From the overburdening of the Aquilla UAV to the massive and poorly planned investment in robotics made by General Motors in the early 1980s, robotics has been an area of unfulfilled promises.