cloaca
Americannoun
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cloacae
plural
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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
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
Non-mammals, such as birds and reptiles, have a common body opening, called a cloaca, for the digestive, excretory and reproductive systems.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022
There remains one monument which has always been supposed to show a real advance made by the Etruscans in the art of architecture—the cloaca maxima in Rome.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 8 "Ethiopia" to "Evangelical Association" by Various
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
Crocodiles and alligators, which are the closest living cousins of dinosaurs, have cloacae that are horizontal slits.
From Slate ● Oct. 21, 2020
He pointed to a hole in the ground, which resembled those that led down to the cloacae.
From Historical Miniatures by August Strindberg
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.
