loam
Americannoun
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loams
plural
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a rich, friable soil containing a relatively equal mixture of sand and silt and a somewhat smaller proportion of clay.
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a mixture of clay, sand, straw, etc., used in making molds for founding and in plastering walls, stopping holes, etc.
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earth or soil.
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Obsolete. clay or clayey earth.
verb (used with object)
noun
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rich soil consisting of a mixture of sand, clay, and decaying organic material
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a paste of clay and sand used for making moulds in a foundry, plastering walls, etc
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of loam
First recorded before 900; from late Middle English lome, earlier lam(e), Old English lām; cognate with Dutch leem, German Lehm “loam, clay”; akin to lime 2
Explanation
Loam is soil — rich soil — that is a mix of sand, clay, and various organic materials. Loam is often used to make bricks. Loam is a type of soil that's got a lot going on: loam contains clay, sand, and decaying organic substances. This combination makes loam particularly useful as a building material. Many bricks are made from loam. It can help you remember loam is used in building if you know that it’s often referred to as "clayey earth." Because of the organic material, loam is also useful as soil for growing crops. This rich soil is helpful in both building and growing.
Vocabulary lists containing loam
Can You Dig It? Words for Dirt and Soil
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Dirty Words: The Language of Gardening
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Physical Geography - Middle School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
At first, settling into the moist loam, the plant is an innocent sproutling, soft and gentle, harmless, edible to browsing Herefords.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 17, 2025
Monday morning, workers will begin placing soil — sandy loam mixed with lightweight volcanic aggregate — on the wildlife overpass.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 31, 2025
The result, if we want to get really geeky, is a mix of clay, pure sand and sandy loam.
From BBC ● Nov. 21, 2024
That’s because, contrary to the shibboleth, the good isn’t the enemy of the great—it’s the loam of the great.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 9, 2023
One minute they were above ground, a moment later there was a veritable shower of loam and topsoil as they vanished beneath the earth: nature’s own technicians.
From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques
On light, sandy soils it will be found wise to turn the whole crop under with the plow, while on heavy loams this plan is of doubtful benefit.
From Farm Gardening with Hints on Cheap Manuring Quick Cash Crops and How to Grow Them by Anonymous
The soft limestone underlying this region is covered, in the uplands, with grey, sandy soils, which have a subsoil of loam; in the lowlands the surface soils are loams, the subsoils clays.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 7 "Geoponici" to "Germany" by Various
Try to find the proportion of vegetable matter in each of the following: loams from various sources, sand, clay, gravel.
From Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study by Ontario. Ministry of Education
It is most common in sandy or gravelly loams, and is absent from the hard clay soils.
From The Mammals of Washtenaw County, Michigan Occasional Papers of the Museum of Zoology, No. 123 by Norman Wood
The result is a great destruction of the humus of the soil, and great leaching and washing, especially in the light loams of the hill country of the United States.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 5 "Cosway" to "Coucy" by Various
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