Mileage is the distance traveled, measured in miles. When your family takes a road trip, the car's odometer tracks the mileage from home to your destination. A delivery truck driver might log 300 miles in a single day.

The word also refers to how efficiently something uses fuel. A car that gets good mileage travels many miles on each gallon of gas, saving money and resources. When comparing vehicles, people often ask about gas mileage: a small hybrid car might get 50 miles per gallon, while a large truck might get only 15. Better mileage means fewer stops at the gas station and a lighter impact on your wallet.

In a broader sense, mileage means how much use or benefit you get from something. If you buy a sturdy backpack that lasts through elementary school, middle school, and high school, you're getting excellent mileage out of it. A teacher might say, “We got a lot of mileage out of that science experiment,” meaning the class learned from it repeatedly or in multiple ways. A comedian gets mileage from a good joke by using it in show after show. The phrase suggests squeezing every bit of value from something, the way a fuel-efficient car squeezes every mile from a gallon of gas.