mile a minute

See also: mile-a-minute

English

Alternative forms

• mile-a-minute

Noun

mile a minute (plural miles a minute)

1. A rate of sixty miles per hour.
   • 1949 November and December, Cecil J. Allen, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 365:

     But when we streaked through Doncaster at all but a mile-a-minute, with a miraculously clear road, in no more than 37 min. 18 sec. from the York start, I began to sit up and take notice.

   • 1961 October, “The winter timetables of British Railways: Southern Region”, in Trains Illustrated, page 593:

     The new Waterloo-Exeter times of the S.R. flyer are 2hr 58min down and 1min more up, in less than 3hr, that is to say, in both directions, with the help of four runs timed at over a mile a minute.

   • 2023 March 8, Philip Haigh, “Can Scottish specifications meet ambitious targets?”, in RAIL, number 978, page 58:

     Transport Scotland now taks about a 'mile a minute' target for ScotRail inter-city services by 2030. At first glance, this sounds pretty impressive, but we've seen that Glasgow-Edinburgh electric services can easily beat this. What of longer journeys? It's 180 miles from Glasgow Queen Street to Inverness, which at a mile a minute translates into a 180-minute (or three-hour) journey.

Phrase

mile a minute

1. (informal) Very quickly.

   He talks a mile a minute.

Derived terms

• talk a mile a minute.

References

• “a mile a minute”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.