What does "minecraft" mean?

A warship which lays naval mines.

How do you pronounce "minecraft"?

Pronounced //ˈmaɪnˌkɹæft//.

//ˈmaɪnˌkɹæft// name, noun, verb

name, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A warship which lays naval mines.
"Each was marked by lighted dan buoys spaced at one-mile intervals, laid by Fairmile motor launches of the Royal Navy, which followed immediately behind the minecraft."

Verb

1
To play the video game Minecraft. intransitive
"In the fullness of time, we can confirm that consumers do generally prefer metaverse platforms named after verbs, or at least strongly imply them: Minecrafting, building blocks and forts in Roblox and Fortnite, VRChat-ing, and so on."

Proper Noun

1
A sandbox video game, released in 2011, in which players explore a three-dimensional world made of blocks and can craft items, build structures, fight mobs to get experience points, enchant items and defeat bosses to earn rewards.
"Sam has beaten the Ender Dragon twice, killed the wither thrice, obtained netherite armor and built an obsidian fort in Minecraft."

"He plays Minecraft day in, day out."

Etymology 1

From mine + craft; coined by Paul Eres in May 2009, a member of the TIGSource Forums.

Etymology 2

From mine + -craft.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.