Quarries

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. Sites where stone, rock, or minerals are excavated for commercial use ; living creatures hunted or chased by predators or humans
2. Areas exploited to obtain building materials like stone or minerals ; creatures sought after as targets by hunters or predators
3. Locations where natural stone or minerals are mined from the earth ; animals or beings pursued for capture or killing by others

Etymology: Two unrelated words share this spelling, and the hunting sense has a surprisingly gruesome origin. In Anglo-Norman, "quiree" named the entrails of a deer, placed on the hide and tossed to the hounds of the chase as their reward. That word came from Latin "cor", meaning "heart", through Vulgar Latin "corata" for "entrails". The sense shifted from the offal itself to the animal being hunted, so a quarry became the creature the hunters were after. The stone sense comes from a different root entirely. Medieval Latin "quarreria", recorded in 1266, meant a place where stones are squared, and it passed through Old French "quarrière" (modern French "carrière") into Middle English. Its ultimate source is Latin "quadrare", "to square", from "quadra", a square, and "quattuor", four. Quarries are, in a sense, places where blocks get cut into four-sided shapes.

Synonyms: pits, excavations, mines, diggings, sources