steam shovel

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English[edit]

WOTD – 4 March 2023

Etymology[edit]

A steam shovel (sense 1) at work in a limestone quarry, probably in the state of Washington, U.S.A., c. 1911.

From steam +‎ shovel.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

steam shovel (plural steam shovels) (construction)

  1. (historical) An excavating machine designed to effect a shovelling action through steam power.
  2. (by extension) Any excavating machine of similar design, no matter how powered.
    Synonym: power shovel

Hypernyms[edit]

Meronyms[edit]

Coordinate terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

any excavating machine of similar design, no matter how powered — see power shovel

Verb[edit]

steam shovel (third-person singular simple present steam shovels, present participle steam shovelling or (US) steam shoveling, simple past and past participle steam shovelled or (US) steam shoveled) (also figuratively)

  1. (transitive) To excavate (a place, or something from a place) using a steam shovel.
    • 1914 February, “Construction Work, January”, in Reclamation Record, volume 5, number 2, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Reclamation Service, →OCLC, page 66, column 2:
      At Lahontan the teams were engaged on the earthwork of the dike with the adjoining Lahontan Beach canal south of the dam. Paving of the up-stream slope of the dam was carried out by night shift in steam shoveling rock at the quarry and delivering by cars and cableway to the dam, where paving was placed by day shift and nearly completed to the present top of the dam at the end of the month.
    • 1918 February, Guy Elliott Mitchell, “Billions of Barrels of Oil Locked up in Rocks”, in Gilbert H[ovey] Grosvenor, editor, National Geographic, volume XXXIII, number 2, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society […], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 205, column 2:
      [H]ere in America there are mountains of oil rock which can be blasted and steam-shoveled and transported by gravity to great retorts which will turn out oil and fertilizer in limitless quantities.
    • 1922 November 28, V. C. Heikes, “Gold, Silver, Copper, Lead, and Zinc in Arizona”, in Mineral Resources of the United States 1921, part I (Metals), Washington, D.C.: [United States Geological Survey, Department of the Interior]; Government Printing Office, published 1924, →OCLC, page 321:
      Considerable copper ore, steam-shoveled from Sacramento Hill and piled at Bisbee, was of smelting and milling grade, and some of it was put on the dump for heap leaching.
    • 1931 February 17, Mark L. Requa, quotee, “Statement of Harold Walker, Representing the Pan American Petrolum & Transport Co., New York City”, in Regulating Importation of Petroleum and Related Products: Hearings before the Committee of Ways and Means, House of Representatives, Seventy-first Congress, Third Session on H.R. 16585: A Bill to Regulate Commerce between the United States and Foreign Countries in Crude Petroleum and All Products of Petroleum, including Fuel Oil, and to Limit the Importation thereof, and for Other Purposes […], Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 297:
      I do know that some of the most influential people in the oil-mining industry have made some investigations with a view of steam shoveling certain areas, and that they found conditions were such, with the beds of barren material lying between the high-grade product, that they could not steam shovel it, […]
    • 1943 March 19, “Appendix DD: The War Shipping Panel [Opinion on Union Maintenance]”, in The Termination Report of the National War Labor Board: Industrial Disputes and Wage Stabilization in Wartime: January 12, 1942 – December 31, 1945, volume III (Appendixes to Volume I, Part II), Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, published 1947, →OCLC, page 234:
      Approximately eighty-five percent of the iron mined in the United States in recent decades has come from the ore ranges adjoining the upper Lakes, and most of all from the fabulous Mesabi Range, some fifty miles northwest of Duluth, now steam-shovelled deep in what was recently a frontier wilderness of snow, lakes and northern forests, […]
    • 2008, Terri Clark, chapter 7, in Sleepless, New York, N.Y.: HarperTeen, HarperCollins Publishers, →ISBN, page 95:
      At first I was acutely aware of how close we were, but then—when Dan started steam-shoveling food into his mouth—I laughted and relaxed into the moment.
    • 2008, Coleen Murtagh Paratore, “Tucker, Jupey, and Stew”, in The Funeral Director’s Son, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, →ISBN, page 40:
      I'm steam-shoveling scrambled eggs and pancakes with syrup into my mouth next morning when Dad sits down with the newspaper.
    • 2019, Jonathan Janz, chapter 3, in Savage Species, London: Flame Tree Publishing, →ISBN, part 1 (Night Terrors):
      Jesse imagined a group of Children back there steam shoveling the mashed corpses out of the way, an assembly line of the beasts passing the deat and wounded back toward the arena.
  2. (intransitive) To operate a steam shovel.
    • [1876 September 28, C. C. Martin (witness), “[Proceedings before the City Court of Brooklyn, Kings County, New York]”, in N.Y. Court of Appeals: William C. Kingsley & Abner C. Keeney, Appellants, against the City of Brooklyn, Respondent: Appeal Book, Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.: Eagle Print, […], published 1879, page 883:
      I have never had any experience with steam shoveling.
      A noun use.]
    • 1920 June, Archibald Rutledge, “Twenty Feet at Rimini”, in Reginald T. Townsend, editor, Country Life, volume XXXVIII, number 2, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC, page 92, column 3:
      [I]n the tumultuous rootings of a potato field, in which hogs had long foraged and steam-shoveled, there were woodcock, squatting sedately and boring assiduously in the soft brown loam.
    • a. 1964 (date written), A[iden] W[ilson] Tozer, Worship: The Reason We Were Created—Collected Insights from A. W. Tozer‎[1], Chicago, Ill.: Moody Publishers, published 2017, →ISBN:
      They're steam shoveling there with this great ugly nose plowing out a hole and throwing the dirt up on the bank or in trucks to haul away.

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Further reading[edit]

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