land mine

noun

: a mine usually placed just below the surface of the ground and designed to be exploded usually by the weight of vehicles or troops passing over it
often used figuratively
Every aspect of this scheme is a potential land mine.Henry A. Kissinger
a political land mine

Examples of land mine in a Sentence

parents of teenagers never know when they might set off an emotional land mine
Recent Examples on the Web Bombs that failed to detonate became de facto land mines, which the Vietnamese government estimates have caused 100,000 deaths and injuries since the war’s end. Seth Mydans, New York Times, 15 Mar. 2024 An inert land mine found in a storage unit in Jefferson County just south of Lakewood prompted a shelter-in-place order for a quarter of a mile surrounding Public Storage at 10201 W. Hampden Ave. Katie Langford, The Denver Post, 24 Jan. 2024 Russian troops have settled in on Ukrainian soil and littered eastern Ukraine with land mines, which injure and kill Ukrainian combatants and civilians alike even in areas that the Ukrainian army has won back. Eric Schmidt, Foreign Affairs, 22 Jan. 2024 The $95 billion U.S. aid package to Ukraine under consideration by Congress includes a provision that would fund land mine clearance in the country. Elizabeth Both, NBC News, 20 Feb. 2024 Hex-bar dead lifts, jump rope, land mines, crunches, band curls. Ben McGrath, The New Yorker, 18 Dec. 2023 Baur's algorithm, trained on the visual characteristics of 70 types of land mines, cluster munitions, and other unexploded ordnance, processes the images into a map, with resolution down to a fraction of an inch. Lori Youmshajekian, Scientific American, 21 Nov. 2023 In 2017, the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor found that land mines in Iran had injured seven thousand people and killed around three thousand more since the end of the war. Khalil Sahragard, The New Yorker, 8 Dec. 2023 This month is full of land mines that will explode money and opportunity into the sky for you. Meghan Rose, Glamour, 1 Dec. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'land mine.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1890, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of land mine was in 1890

Dictionary Entries Near land mine

Cite this Entry

“Land mine.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/land%20mine. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

land mine

noun
: a mine placed just below the surface of the ground and designed to be exploded by the weight of the vehicles or troops passing over it
Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
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