square mile

square mile (plural square miles)

1. A unit of area equal to that in a square with 1 mile sides, equivalent to 2.59 km².
   • 2013 June 29, “Unspontaneous combustion”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 29:

     Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia. The cheapest way to clear logged woodland is to burn it, producing an acrid cloud of foul white smoke that, carried by the wind, can cover hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles.

2. A downtown, a city center.

• sq mi, sq. mi., mi² (abbreviation); sq m, sq. m., m² (historical abbr.)
• section (chiefly US & Canadian govt contexts)

• square foot (1/27,878,400 sq. mi.), acre (1/640 sq. mi.), quarter-section (¼ sq. mi.), labor (¼ sq. mi. in Texan contexts)