Meaning & use
steel mill
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountable
A factory where iron is turned into steel and shaped into products such as beams, sheets and bars.
Grammar: Countable: a steel mill closed; steel mills employ thousands.
Patterns
- work in a steel mill
- a steel mill in somewhere
His grandfather worked in a steel mill for forty years.
The old steel mill closed and the town lost thousands of jobs.
Smoke rose from the steel mill on the edge of the city.
Word forms
| plural | steel mills |
|---|
Common combinations
- work in a steel mill
- My uncle works in a steel mill near Pittsburgh.
- a steel mill closure
- The steel mill closure hit the town hard.
- an integrated steel mill
- An integrated steel mill makes steel from raw iron ore.
- a steel mill town
- It is a steel mill town with a proud history.
- shut down a steel mill
- The company decided to shut down the steel mill.
Synonyms and how they differ
- steelworks
- Steelworks is the standard British word for the same type of plant and is treated as singular or plural.
- foundry
- A foundry melts and casts metal into moulds, a narrower job than making steel from iron.
- smelter
- A smelter extracts metal from ore and is more likely to refer to aluminium or copper.
- factory
- Factory is general for any manufacturing plant and does not say what is made.
Word family
Commonly confused: steel mill or steel mile?
steel mill vs steel mile
There is no such phrase; the compound is steel mill with a l.
Practice
Many people in the town lost their jobs when the ____ closed.
Choose one answer.
Steel mill is the factory that makes steel. Steal is a different word with a different spelling, and the other options are not real compounds.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “steel mill”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.