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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Placer

Placer \Pla"cer\, n. One who places or sets.
--Spenser.

Placer

Placer \Plac"er\, n. [Sp.] A deposit of earth, sand, or gravel, containing valuable mineral in particles, especially by the side of a river, or in the bed of a mountain torrent. [U.S.]

Wiktionary
placer

Etymology 1 n. 1 One who places or arranges something. 2 (context slang English) One who deals in stolen goods; a fence.'''2011''', Jonathon Green, ''Crooked Talk: Five Hundred Years of the Language of Crime'', — The 20th-century '''''buyer''''' is self-explanatory, while the '''''placer''''' is a middle-man who places stolen goods with a purchaser. Etymology 2

n. (context ethology sheep Australia New Zealand English) A lamb whose mother has died and which has transferred its attachment to an object, such as a bush or rock, in the locality. Etymology 3

a. (context mining English) alluvial; occurring in a deposit of sand or earth on a river-bed or bank, particularly with reference to precious metals such as gold or silver

WordNet
placer

n. an alluvial deposit that contains particles of some valuable mineral

Gazetteer
Placer -- U.S. County in California
Population (2000): 248399
Housing Units (2000): 107302
Land area (2000): 1404.367303 sq. miles (3637.294463 sq. km)
Water area (2000): 98.410589 sq. miles (254.882245 sq. km)
Total area (2000): 1502.777892 sq. miles (3892.176708 sq. km)
Located within: California (CA), FIPS 06
Location: 38.971576 N, 120.947618 W
Headwords:
Placer
Placer, CA
Placer County
Placer County, CA
Wikipedia
Placer

Placer may refer to one of the following:

  • Placer deposit
  • Placer sheep
  • Placer mining
  • Placer (geography), a submerged bank or reef.
  • Placer, rugby league football role.
  • Placer, a job title in the Pottery industry.

Geographical names:

  • Placer, Masbate, Philippines
  • Placer, Surigao del Norte, Philippines
  • Placer, former name of Loomis, California
  • Placer County, California, United States
Placer (geography)

Placer ( or pracel) is a term used by Spanish and Portuguese navigators and cartographers to refer to a certain kind of submerged bank or reef. Commonly the bottom of such a reef is sandy, but there are some where the bottom is muddy or stoney. Although most reefs designated as placer are flat and shallow, exceptionally there are some that do not share those characteristics and are known as placer acantilado. A placer usually provides an anchorage for seagoing vessels.

Usage examples of "placer".

Now everything was overgrown with brush, and the stream ran clear and clean, undarkened by placer tailings.

Then he recalled that on that memorable night of the Potlatch dance the White Chief had admitted there was gold, but while the tides occasionally uncovered pay-sand rich beyond most placers, there would follow months when not a single color showed up in the sands of Kon Klayu.

No signs of mining, no arrastra, no rusted picks or shovels, no evidence of placer mining.

The diamonds in that tin box came from a placer mine with a high percentage of gem-quality stones.

The gold is not evenly distributed through the surface dirt, as in ordinary placer mines, but is collected in little spots, and they are very wide apart and exceedingly hard to find, but when you do find one you reap a rich and sudden harvest.

A small placer mine some thirty miles away made a limited amount of bog ore available.

Veins of gold like that are the original source of all the big nuggets that end up in placer pockets when the mother lodes are finally eroded away and washed by rain down into streams.

A placer miner down the wash reported values of thirty to thirty-five cents to the pan.

For a while he gave up placer mining and devoted his entire attention to the stream banks, praying that he might find the vein which had produced this splendid gold, but it eluded him.

There were no hydraulic nozzles or sluicing work to indicate placer mining.

Back around 1860 a man named Abe Lee had done some placer mining in California Gulch.

This limited use of the thing to the summer season, when the water needed for placer mining the platinum would not freeze too quickly after the apparatus was shut off to permit workmen to return.

There was placer mining, which involved leveling fair-sized mountains with streams of high-pressure water.

He had found one of the richest placers in Colorado history, and he kept that, fact to himself, panning the gravel and secreting the nuggets, because in California he had learned that when a man found a placer, the trick was to locate the vein which threw off the nuggets, for the nuggets were valuable today, but the vein existed forever.

Louis, Pittsburgh and Boston that Spade Larkin had struck one of the richest of all placers in Blue Valley, a prodigious horde of gold-seekers poured into the west, eager to accomplish there what they had been too late to accomplish in California, and most of them used the South Platte route, which took them past Zendt’s Farm, where they spent the last money they had on food and equipment.