cloaca
Americannoun
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Zoology.
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the common cavity into which the intestinal, urinary, and generative canals open in birds, reptiles, amphibians, many fishes, and certain mammals.
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a similar cavity in invertebrates.
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a sewer, especially an ancient sewer.
noun
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a cavity in the pelvic region of most vertebrates, except higher mammals, and certain invertebrates, into which the alimentary canal and the genital and urinary ducts open
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a sewer
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of cloaca
1650–60; < Latin clo ( u ) āca, cluāca sewer, drain; probably akin to Greek klýzein to wash, wash away
Vocabulary lists containing cloaca
Ancient Rome - Middle School and High School
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Animals (Zoology) - High 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:
They transform some of those same nitrogen-based compounds into solids known as "urates," which are expelled through a shared opening called the cloaca.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 25, 2025
As the researchers report today in Science, mom released a white substance from her cloaca, which her young immediately gobbled up.
From Science Magazine ● Mar. 6, 2024
It can “breathe” through its cloaca if it needs to.
From NewsForKids.net ● Feb. 6, 2024
Instead they have a single orifice called a cloaca that is used for defecation as well as reproduction in both males and females.
From Scientific American ● Feb. 16, 2023
The privy in private houses was usually situated near the kitchen, and a common drain from the kitchen and the privy discharged into the public cloaca.
From Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine by Elliott, James Sands
At higher doses, lolamicin killed up to 90% of multidrug-resistant E. coli, K. pneumoniae and E. cloacae clinical isolates.
From Science Daily ● May 29, 2024
One of the new compounds, lolamicin, selectively targeted some "laboratory strains of gram-negative pathogens including Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Enterobacter cloacae," the researchers found.
From Science Daily ● May 29, 2024
Finally, we’re testing truly healthy specimens: we’re going out into the environment, and we’re banding birds and swabbing their eyelids and cloacae.
From Scientific American ● Aug. 13, 2021
Bird cloacae are round or square and normally covered up by feathers, unless you’ve ever seen an ostrich evacuate and wondered what the hell you’re looking at.
From Slate ● Oct. 21, 2020
The shores and channel of the Tiber, the vast cloacae which carried off the refuse of the City, the quays and warehouses of Portus at the river's mouth were also under his authority.
From The Letters of Cassiodorus Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator by Hodgkin, Thomas
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
