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
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
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
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
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
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
By itself, evidence that non-avian dinosaurs had cloacae isn’t a huge shocker.
From Slate ● Oct. 21, 2020
He provided carefully for the preservation of all the monuments of antiquity, repaired the walls, the aqueducts, the cloacae, and drained the Pontine Marshes.
From A Short History of Italy (476-1900) by Henry Dwight Sedgwick
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