landmine

or land mine

[ land-mahyn ]

noun

, Military.

1. an explosive charge concealed just under the surface of the ground or of a roadway, designed to be detonated by pressure, proximity of a vehicle or person, etc.
2. aerial mine ( def 2 ).

Word History and Origins

Origin of landmine¹

First recorded in 1885–90

Example Sentences

When I started traveling—I was in a film and it took me to Cambodia where I learned about refugees and landmines—I started to realize how much I didn’t know.

From Time

Magawa was one of hundreds of “hero rats” that have been trained since the 1990s by APOPO to detect landmines.

From Time

It’s a dated number and hard to corroborate, but having spent a decent amount of time perusing toy departments and hopscotching landmines scattered around my house, it seems plausible.

From Time

The tiny single-celled organisms have even been trained to glow when they encounter TNT, the chemical trace of landmines, to enable humanitarian organizers to spot explosives and eventually remove them.

From Popular-Science

At the same time, those same marketers are increasingly expected to take a stand on potentially brand-busting landmines like politics and civil unrest.

From Digiday

The world had become a different place and I found myself unequipped to interpret a whole new landmine-strewn nomenclature.

From The Daily Beast

Chayefsky first set words down on paper after convalescing from injuries suffered from an exploding landmine.

From The Daily Beast

Moments later, he activated a landmine, resulting in his death, leaving those color images as his final photographs.

From The Daily Beast

Her famous walk—twice—through the half cleared landmine field in Angola was enormously brave and made a lasting impact.

From The Daily Beast

The picture became one of the most celebrated anti-landmine images.

From The Daily Beast