mile

Etymology

From Middle English myle, mile, from Old English mīl, from Proto-West Germanic *mīliju, a borrowing of Latin mīlia, mīllia, plural of mīle, mīlle (“mile”) (literally ‘thousand’ but used as a short form of mīlle passūs (“a thousand paces”)).

noun

1. The international mile: a unit of length precisely equal to 1.609344 kilometers established by treaty among Anglophone nations in 1959, divided into 5,280 feet or 1,760 yards.
   Turn left in 1.2 miles.
   You need to go about three mile down the road. (UK colloquial plural)
2. Any of several customary units of length derived from the 1593 English statute mile of 8 furlongs, equivalent to 5,280 feet or 1,760 yards of various precise values.
   Athelstan Arundel walked home all the way, foaming and raging. No omnibus, cab, or conveyance ever built could contain a young man in such a rage. His mother lived at Pembridge Square, which is four good measured miles from Lincoln's Inn. 1892, Walter Besant, The Ivory Gate: A Novel, page 16
   Ivor had acquired more than a mile of fishing rights with the house ; he was not at all a good fisherman, but one must do something ; one generally, however, banged a ball with a squash-racket against a wall. 1922, Michael Arlen, “3/19/2”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days
   From the ground, Colombo’s port does not look like much.[…] But viewed from high up in one of the growing number of skyscrapers in Sri Lanka’s capital, it is clear that something extraordinary is happening: China is creating a shipping hub just 200 miles from India’s southern tip. 2013-06-08, “The new masters and commanders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 52
3. Any of many customary units of length derived from the Roman mile (mille passus) of 8 stades or 5,000 Roman feet.
4. The Scandinavian mile: a unit of length precisely equal to 10 kilometers defined in 1889.
5. Any of many customary units of length from other measurement systems of roughly similar values, as the Chinese (里) or Arabic mile (al-mīl).
6. (travel) An airline mile in a frequent flyer program.
7. (informal) Any similarly large distance.
   The shot missed by a mile.
8. (slang) A race of 1 mile's length; a race of around 1 mile's length (usually 1500 or 1600 meters)
   The runners competed in the mile.
9. (slang) One mile per hour, as a measure of speed.
   five miles over the speed limit